Cinema Papers September-October 1976

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ISSUE 10

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Films for the specialist . . .

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has all the answers It is the quarterly journal of the Federation of Victorian Film Societies now published with the assistance of the Australia Council Film, Radio and Television Board.

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1976 SUBSCRIPTION: $16.00 inc. postage from: F.V.F.S., 4 Stanley Grove, Canterbury, Victoria, 3126.

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Please detail specific information required and send S.A.E. plus One Dollar search fee for each Three enquiries to:

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STOP THOSE N ASTY RUMOURS -IT 'S BUSINESS A S USUAL “The Government is determined that creative filmmaking will continue and that there will be no diminution in this e f f o r t Malcolm Fraser (Hansard , 3 June 1976).

Funds for filmmaking, video and radio grants formerly administered by the Film, Radio and Television Board will continue to operate within the Australian Film Commission.

Applications for the next assessment for the:

Applications for the next assessment for the:

Advanced Production Fund and the

Experim ental Film & Television Fund

Script Developm ent Fund close on 30 September 1976 — APPLICATION FORMS are available from: The Chairman, Australian Film Commission, G.P.O. Box 3984, SYDNEY NSW 2001.

close on 20 September 1976 — APPLICATION FORMS are available from: Australian Film Institute, P.O. Box 165, CARLTON SOUTH VIC 3053

FOR INFORMATION: Telephone a Project Officer at the Creative Develop­ ment Branch of the Australian Film Commission : Sydney 922 6855.

Let the Balloon Go A great family film about a boy’s battle to win individuality.

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Bolex announces the H16EL, with a new kind of meter that is ultra sensitive to light changes and built for hard use.

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Articles and Interviews Nagisa Oshima: Forms and Feelings Under the Rising Sun

Jan Dawson

106

lljillp

Philippe Mora: Interview

Mike Harris

112

Gay Cinema

Krzysztof Zanussi Interviewed; 134

Noe! Purdon John Heyer: Interview Gordon Glenn and Ian Stocks Film and China Pat Edgar Straub/HuilSet: The Politics of Film Practice Susan Dermody Krzysztof Zanussi: Interview Scott Murray Australian Women Filmmakers Part 2 Joan Long Marco Ferreri: Interview Robert Schar Marco Bellocchio: interview Robert Schar Restrictive Trade Practices Legislation Ransom Stoddard Here McIntyre Showman 1890-1976 Andrew Pike

115 120 123 126 134 138 142

Straub and Huiilet The Politics of Film Practice: 126

143 156 164

Features The Quarter Guide for the Australian Film Producer Antony I. Ginnane and Leon Gorr 1976 Cannes Film Festival

Antony I. Ginnane

104 131

144

Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals, 1976

Scott Murray

.

148

Fifth International Festival of Fantastique and Science Fiction Cinema

Verina Glaessner

1976 Cannes Festival Reviewed: 144

Production Survey Columns

tetters

152 159 177 178

Film Reviews

Gay Cinema Directors, Actors, Ways Out: 115

Pure S

John O’Hara

167

Mad Mad Morgan

Beryl Donaidson and John Langer

168

Taxi Driver

John O’Hara Je Suis Pierre Riviere

Scott Murray

170 170

All the President’s Men/Mother Kuster’s Trip to Heaven

Tom Ryan

171

Oz

Beryl Donaldson and John Langer

172

Family Plot

Ken Mogg

172

Book Reviews Marco Bellocchio Interviewed: 143

The John Ford Movie Mystery and John Ford

Tom Ryan

175

The Oxford Companion to Film

Scott Murray

Philippe Mora Snterviewed:112

175

Editorial Board: Peter Beilby, Philippe Mora, Scott Murray. Managing Editor: Scott Murray. Contributing Editors: Antony I. Ginnane, Rod Bishop, Graham Shirley, David Elfick, Noel Purdon, Richard Brennan, Gordon Glenn. Design & Layout: Keith Robertson. Office Manager: Mary Reichenvater. Editorial Assistance: Andrew Pecze. Subediting: Maurice Perera.

Proofing: Angela Jurjevic, Phillip Edmonds. Correspondents: London — Jan Dawson. Montreal — Dave Jones. Adver­ tising: Melbourne — Barbara Guest, Tel. 329 5983. Sydney — Sue Adler, Tel. 26 1625. Printing: Waverley Offset Group.

Distribution: Consolidated Press Pty. Ltd. Cinema Papers is produced with financial assistance from the Film, Radio and

Television Board of the Australia Council. Signed articles represent the views of their authors and not necessarily those of the Editors. While every care is taken of manuscripts and materials supplied for this magazine, neither the Editors nor the Publishers accept any liability for loss or damage which may arise. This magazine may not, by way of trade, be reproduced in whole or in part, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Cinema Papers is published every three months by Cinema Papers, 143 Therry Street, Melbourne 3000 (Tel. 329 5983); 365A Pitt Street, Sydney (Tel. 26 1625). (c) Copyright Cinema Papers, September/October, 1976.

Front cover; two stills from Nagisa Oshima’s Empire of the Senses. This film, and others by Oshima, are looked at on pages 106-111.

Recommended price only.

GOVERNMENT FILMFUNDING EXPANSION The South Australian Film Cor­ poration, now well established with two successes to its name (Sunday Too Far Away and Picnic At Hanging Rock), has set an e xam ple w hich the governments of other states seem keen to emulate.

Victoria’s Hamer government led the way by announcing that legislation was being prepared to set up a State Film Corporation which would invest in production and establish certain production facilities (noteably a sound stage of full feature size) presently lack­ ing in Victoria.

While the legislation was being prepared, the Arts Ministry (under whose aegis the new corporation presently is) stated that it had com­ mitted funds to three productions: Pat Lovell’s Break of Day; Homestead Films’ Both Ends Against the Middle and Fred Schepisi’s The Devil’s Playground. The latter investment is an advance to cover distribution - exhibi­ tion costs (Schepisi is showcasing Devil’s Playground on a producerexhibitor basis, cf Between Wars); while the first two were actual produc­ tion funds.

The legislation nas now gone through Parliament and the members of the recently announced Corporation w e re G ra h a m B u rk e ( V i Ila g e /R o a d s h o w /H e x a g o n ); C liff Green (writer of Picnic af Hanging Rock); Nigel Dick (Crawfords); Natalie M ille r (S h a rm ill F ilm s ); John McLachlan (Channel 0); Fred Schepisi.

The Corporation’s chairman' is Peter Rankin (of John Clemenger Adver­ tising, advertising consultants to Village theatres).

The Corporation has yet to set up ad­ ministrative procedures for funds application, but this has not deterred a num ber of w ould-be applicants approaching its members.

Almost immediately after the an­ nouncement of the Victorian Corpora­ tion members, Neville Wran’s NSW government announced the imminent formation of a similar state body. At the same time, it was made public that the NSW government would invest $120,­ 000 in Joan Long’s production, The Picture Show Man.

Wran considered Ms Long’s Caddie track record, as well as the fact that the film would be shot entirely in NSW. He lamented the fact that many filmmakers were leaving the state because of the inactivity of the previous state govern­ ment in this field. He then appointed two of the three members of the interim committee of the New South Wales Corporation. The chairman is Paul Riomfalvy, of Aztec Services, and the m e m b e r is M ic h a e l T h o r n h ill (producer-director).

In Queensland, where a t least four Australian productions are currently in the planning stage and two are about to commence production, the state government commented that a similar move was being undertaken. Mr Bjelke Petersen, it was pointed out, was keen to invest in films made in Queensland and what Mr Petersen wants in the deep north, he usually gets.

It will be interesting to observe w he th er th is c la m o u r of state legislatures to deposit taxpayers money into film production will result in a corresponding increase in investment interest from the private sector.

104—Cinema Papers, September

“I’M STILL HERE, ETC”: POSTSCRIPT ON 7 KEYS In spite of the optimism for the future expressed by its founder and chairman in an interview in the last issue of Cinema Papers, the future of 7 Keys, the maverick Australian and British dis­ tribution set up, looks increasingly less rosy.

In a page-one story in the British trade paper Screen International, and picked up by Variety the following week, Andrew Gaty conceded that in a little over 12 months of operation his British company had managed to run up debts of over £150,000.

Among the unproven creditors are Technicolor Labs (£14,000); Rank Film Laboratories (£45,000); the Curzon Cinema (where 7 Keys four walled the American Film Theatre under the title British Film Theatre); Chevron Adver­ tis in g and the Inland Revenue Department. Only Technicolor have so far issued a writ, and Gaty took the view that it might be possible for the com­ pany to trade out, rather than go into immediate liquidation. This will, of course, depend on the combined at­ titude of his creditors (more than 80 in number). But it may well be that, like the creditors of the illfated Bryanston Distributors in the U.S., they may con­ sider allowing the company to continue trading as this could be the only way they will retrieve some of their debts.

Gaty hopes for continued playoff of the company’s British library, as well as sales to television to get the cash in; but as most of the major British personnel have left his employ, this may be easier said than done.

7 Key’s misfortune was to be caught expanding in a contracting market period. The British outfit, totally funded out of the Australian operation, fell into difficulties when the downturn in the A ustralian m arket (post colour television) meant that large sums of money were no longer available for transfer overseas.

As for Australia, 7 Keys has virtually no new major product on its books and is hoping it will be able to lie doggo until the local trade picks up. The major Australian personnel are still with the organization. So here, at least, it may be possible for Gaty to continue obtain­ ing revenue.

Certainly his exhibition associates, particularly Hoyts Theatres, have not deserted him, and are continuing to provide him with dates. There are rumours, however, that a number of suits are pending in Australia, the out­ comes of which may well blow the final whistle on the mercurial career of Andrew Gaty. The imminent appoint­ ment of a receiver and manager is predicted by Gaty’s managing director, Ken Beaton, who, while admitting that the liabilities of the company are well in excess of assets, is hopeful it may yet trade out.

HEXAGON MARCHES ON A multi-state splash release at Christmas, through Hoyts theatres, is being planned for Hexagon’s super spectacle Mrs Fraser (presently being scored by Bruce Smeaton). It is rumoured that the eventual production budget of the two hour plus film may well exceed $1,500,000 which certainly makes it the most expensive Australian feature ever. At this budget, even if its

local grosses managed to emulate Pic­ nic at Hanging Rock, it would still need substantial overseas cash sales to go into the black.

Of course, Hexagon's actual cash tie up in Mrs Fraser is not as substantial as the Australian Film Commission’s, the Lieberman family’s and those others involved in the bankrolling. Still, Hexagon are already putting out foreign sales feelers. In a print-styled advance advertisement in Variety, Mrs Fraser is predicted to be in the top 10 grossing films worldwide in 1977. That will take some doing even for the Village/Roadshow success machine.

Since the exit of Bilcock and Copp­ ing Pty. Ltd. from the Hexagon cor­ porate structure, there have been a number of power shifts within the organization. Village personnel, perhaps not unnaturally given the pre­ sent industry recession, seem to be taking a closer look at Hexagon activity, and the recent appointment of Robert Kirby, son of the Village co-founder Roc Kirby, and presently vying for Sir Norman Rydge’s title as “cosmic” cost accountant, as chairman of directors points this up.

On the ongoing front, Hexagon have managed to get the AFC to commit itself to a package investment scheme for four films, the first of which, High Rollers, scripted by Forest Redlich, touted as the David Williamson of 1977, commences production, in October in Queensland with an interesting foreign name (soon to be announced) heading the cast list.

In spite of the AFC and Lieberman assistance, Village are making sub­ stantial cash contributions to lubricate the Hexagon cash flow. Clearly its future as an ongoing production unit is intricately tied to the success of Mrs Fraser. That first week after December 19 will be a tense time for Hexagon, and indeed for the entire industry.

FOREIGN PRODUCTION NEWS FRANCE

Chabrol’s two latest films, Magiciens and Foiies Bourgeoises (The Twist), are on release in Paris, and he is soon to start on Alice, a fantasy set in Ireland with Sylvia Kristel. This will be followed

by The Basque Beret; St. Petersburg — Cannes Express, with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland; and Monday’s Child, the love story between a woman of 30 and a boy of 16.

Alain Resnais’ Providence is still in production and stars Dirk Bogard, Sir John Gielgud and Ellen Burstyn.

Resnais hopes to shortly film Mon On­ cle d’Amerique from a script by Jean Gruault (Adele H, L’Enfant Savage, Jules et Jim).

Alain Fleischer’s Dehors-Dedans with Catherine Jourdan has been the centre of much controversy in Paris. Ms Jourdan has been extremely busy this year, starring in De Grey (Chabrol), Marriage a la Mode (Michel Mondore) and Blondy (Sergio Gobbi). Her most famous films are Albicocco’s Le Petit Matin and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Eden and After.

Jean-Claude Brialy, part-time actor and director, is to base his fifth feature on the life-story of Marie Duplessis, the woman Dumas based his Lady of the Camelias on. The screenplay has been written by Jean Aurenche (The Judge, and the Assassin). Isabelle Adjani from Polanski’s The Tennant and Truffaut’s Adele H will star. She has also

appeared in Andre Techine’s follow-up to Souvenirs d’en France, Barocco.

Having just completed Une Femme a sa Fenetre, Pierre Granier-Deferre is to make Venise en Octobre, which will be followed by Harmonie ou les Horreurs de la Guerre. Claude Goretta’s new film will be a version of 1974 Goncourt prizewinner, La Dentelliere. It will star Isabelle Huppert who is soon to appear in Jacques Demy’s new film. Like Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, the entire film will be sung, and is a romantic story of a salesgirl, who while engaged to the hero becomes pregnant. He then leaves her for a femme fatale, but is destroyed by her and dies. Provisional titles are Une Chambre en Ville and Edith de Nantes. It will contain nude and erotic scenes “ in keeping with today’s trends” .

Anna Karina is preparing to follow­ up her first feature, Vivre Ensemble, with a police thriller, still untitled. Jean Moreau's next, however, is called Adolescence, which she says is “dedicated to my mother” . Nelly Kaplan has also completed her new film NEA which is based on an unpublished novel by Emmanuelle Arsan.

Films in production are: Robert Bresson’s Le Diable Probablement, Sidney Pollack’s Bobby Deerfield, Yves Boisset’s On L’Appelle X, Jacques Deray’s Le Gang (again with Alain Delon), Agnes Varda’s L’Une Chante, L’Autre Pas, Henri Verneiul’s Le Corps de mon Ennemi.

in preparation are Claude Lelouch’s Si C’Etait a Refaire, Maurice Pialat’s Le Filles du Faubourg (with an un­

professional cast of “jeune filles, 15 a 17 ans” , like photographer David Hamilton’s first feature, Bilitis), Claude Berri’s La Premiere Fois . . . , and Pascal Thomas’ Confidences Pour Confidences.

UNITED STATES

It seems everyone is making sequels at the moment. There is John Boor­ man’s Exorcist II: The Heretic; and the follow-up to Richard Donner’s The Omen to be called The Omen-li.

P aram ount P ic tu re s has asked Leonard Goldberg to produce the se­ cond Bad News Bears, still untitled.

And the final episode of Sheriff Buford Pusser’s life, Walking Tall — Final Chapter, is to be directed by Jack Starrett. The first two Pusser films were Walking Tall and Part 2, Walking Tall.

Ninki Maslansky, remembered for her involvement with-Terry Bourke’s Plugg, is in the U.S. negotiating a screen version of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Mai Zetterling will direct and shooting is planned to start in December.

Peter Yates is directing Peter Bencnley’s sequel to Jaws — The Deep. Robert Shaw, who starred in the first, is participating as is Jacqueline Bisset. Martin Ritt’s Casey’s Shadow is in post-production, along with Jack Smight’s Damnation Alley. Alvin Sargent has scripted a feature from a chapter from Lillian Heilman’s Pen­ timento called “Julia” . The film, also entitled Julia, is being directed by Fred Zimmerman.

‘Exiled’ British director, Michael Winner, is presently making The Sen­ tinel, while Martin Scorsese is directing New York, New York from a script by Earl Rauch. Woody Allen’s new film is — Woody Allen Film. And the director of the marvellous Something for Everyone, Harold Prince, is making A Little Night Music with Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Rigg in Vienna.

THE QUARTER

BRITAIN

British independent film producer, Michael Klinger, is planning a sequel to Shout at the Devil. He hopes to again use Barbara Parkins, Roger Moore and Lee Marvin.

In a four-page ad in the September 1 issue of Variety, Albert R. Broccoli and United Artists announced the start of the 10th James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me. This little-known Ian Fleming (it was even banned in Australia for many years) was scripted

by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum. Roger Moore is again Bond, and Lewis Gilbert is to direct. The world’s largest stage is under construc­ tion at Pinewood Studios for the film.

After the runaway success of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Terry Gillam is making Jabberwocky with Max Wall and Warren Mitchell. Producer of the two Musketeers films, Ilya Salkind, has produced The Prince and the Pauper, using Richard Fleischer as the director.

Many actors from the Lester films are starring, including Charlton Heston, Oliver Reed, and Raquel Welch. Ilya Salkind will then be joined by Alex­ ander S alkind to produce Guy Hamilton’s Superman, with Marlon Brando as Superman’s father, and Gene Hackman as Luthor, “the greatest villain in the world” . Director of Farewell My Lovely, Dick Richards, is making March or Die with Max Von Sydow, Gene Hackman, Terence Hill and Catherine Deneuve. Shooting is in Madrid.

After his successful film version of the Nobel Prize Winner Heinrich Boll’s “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum” Now Volker Schlondorffs Le Coup de Grace based upon the novel

by Marguerite Yourcenar

Starring: ' Margarethe von Trotta Matthias Habich Matthieu Carrière A German-French co-produktion: Bioskop-Film Munich and Argos Film Paris First prints available June 1976

CENSORSHIP: 1 9 7 6 ’s PHOENIX RESURGENS Since the Chipp regime liberalized Australian film censorship by introduc­ ing the “ R” certificate legislation to protect minors, special exemption policies for film festivals, a general tolerance for serious works of cinema, and open range for soft to medium core violence and sexploitation material, the average Melbourne or Sydney filmgoer could be forgiven for believing cen­ sorship had become a non issue.

In fact, however, there is strong evidence that the new L iberal government, aided and abetted by cer­ tain state governments, is in the process of pulling in the reins. The process started with the setting up of a Board of Review in Queensland (Act 31 of 1 974 of the Q u e e n s la n d government). Censorship of films has always been a state responsibility, but Chipp had managed to persuade the various State Attorneys General to delegate their censorial powers to the Federal Film Censorship Board, thus providing for a logical, uniform cen­ sorship all over Australia. (In fact, a Premiers’ conference in August 1946 had achieved token agreement from all States, except South Australia, for such a scheme: and certain legislation was passed by Queensland, West Australia and Tasmania in January 1949. But it was not until Don Chipp took over as Minister for Customs and Excise that this became an Australia-wide reality).

Queensland, however, quickly became disenchanted with the post “ R” liberalism and the result was the Act in question.

The Queensland Board operates in the manner of a kangaroo court wielding the threat of a ban as a big stick to prevent distributors and ex­ hibitors opening contentious films in Queensland. Thus, although the Board has only banned some 35 films since its inception, including (for drive-ins) Australia After Dark and (for all theatres) Fantasm, both Australian p ro d u ctio n s, it has e ffe ctive ly prevented the release of some 200 or more. No exhibitor can afford to spend thousands of dollars launching a film only to find it banned after one or two days in release. At the recent annual Exhibitor’s Conference in Surfers Paradise, exhibitors and distributors from all over Australia passed a motion condemning the double censorship of

EXTRACT OF ACT 31 OF 1974 OF THE QUEENSLAND GOVERNMENT 10. Matters for Board’s consideration in determining whether a film is objec­ tionable. For the purpose of this Act, the Board, in determining whether a film is objectionable, shall have regard to — (a) the nature of the film generally and in particular whether it — . (i) unduly emphasizes matters of sex, horror, terror, crime, cruel­ ty or violence; (ii) is blasphemous, indecent, obscene, or likely to be in­ jurious to morality; (iii) is likely to encourage depravity, public disorder or the commis­ sion of any indictable offence: or (iv) generally outrages public opinion. (b) the persons, classes of persons and age groups to or amongst whom the film is intended or is likely to be ex­ hibited; (c) the tendency of the film to deprave or corrupt the persons, classes or persons or age groups or any of them referred to in subparagraph (b), notwithstanding that other per­ sons or classes of persons or per­ sons in other age groups may not be similarly affected thereby; (d) the circumstances in which the film is exhibited or is intended to be ex­ hibited in the State; (e) the scientific or artistic merit or im­ portance of the film, to the intent that a film shall not be determined an ob­ jectionable film unless, having regard to the matters specified in this section and all other relevant considerations, the Board is of the opinion that the exhibition of the film in the State would have an immoral or mischievous tendency or effect.

FILM CENSORSHIP, MARCH

1976 (Reprinted from Australian Government Gazette No G21, May 25, 1976.)

FILMS REGISTERED E L IM IN A T IO N S

WITHOUT

For General Exhibition (G) Agapi Kai Thiela Effi Briest (16mm) Emborakos Gambler La Grande Illusion I 7i Imera Tis Dimiourgias Lovejoy’s Nuclear War (16mm) The Miracle Man O Nikitis Occhi Senza Luce (Blind Eyes) A Piano (16mm) Tragic Confession (Greek sub-titled version)

Not Recommended for Children (NRC)

the Queensland Board, which inciden­ tally makes no distinction between “art films” and exploitation material, in spite of section 10 (e) set out below.

There are strong rumours that the West Australian government is con­ sidering setting up a similar Board. If so, film producers and distributors will be faced with the impossible task of providing prints of films cut to different lengths for different states, an expen­ sive administrative burden which will only further reduce profitability at a time when the colour television reces­ sion is throttling the industry’s revenue flow.

At a Federal level, in spite of a member of the Film Censorship Board having stated recently she could foresee the introduction of a super “ R” certificate for private club screenings of "triple-X” material, there is no im­ mediate likelihood of this happening. In fact the reverse. Pasolini’s Salo is still banned and the Perth Film Festival was threatened with red tape strangulation if they dared to bring in a print of Oshima’s Empire of the Senses.

A recent meeting of State Chief Secretaries held in Perth, which the Chief Federal Censor attended, was unanimous in the view that censorship needed tightening up, (There were both Liberal and Labor representatives).

Yet, because, of a loophole in federal customs regulations, a small chain of

8mm houses in Sydney and Kings Cross continue to run hard core material with impunity.

M oreover, the a d m in is tra tiv e machinery of the Federal Censorship Board continues to be reactionary, oppressive and vindictive, as two Australian film producers have recently discovered. The major distributors, because they are reliant on the goodwill of the Censor’s office on a day-to-day basis, are forced to bite their tongues at the whims and antics of the inhabitants of the Imperial Arcade office, the fact that the censors are able to arbitrarily hold up at will, with no reason given, precious press, radio and television and trailer advertising material is out­ rageous, especially as each of these media have their own internal stan­ dards; and an offensive theatre front of house would run foul of local police Summary Offences Acts. Further,, the Board’s former nexus with the Customs Department is also used to frighten angry distributors and producers into line.

As the industry develops, Australian producers w ill find themselves enmeshed in such problems and it is time that concerned people again begin to regard film censorship as a bete noire and agitate for an open, regulatory, but not prohibitive, cen­ sorship structure.

Amar Prem And Then There Were None Donne Senza Paradiso The Giant Spider Invasion The Green Hornet The Hard Heads Hedda Im Namen Des Volkes (In The Name of the People) Infernal Triangle La Grande Vallata La Legga Die Gangster Legend of Bruce Lee Legs in Mud (16mm) The Man in the Glass Booth The Man With The Golden Gun (Italian version) Maridos en Vacaciones Mr Hercules Against Karate (Italian version) My Sweet Lady No Time for Tears (16mm) Orgi Potop Part 2 (The Deluge) The Return of the Tall Blond Robin and Marian Tschetan, Der Indianerjunge 28 Minuti per 3 Millioni di Dollari The Voyage (Italian version)

For Mature Audiences (M) Bug Caddie Dark Alley Der Amerikanische Soldat The Devil’s Playground Double Dealing With Love Erotikes Stigmes Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask (a) The First Circle For A Few Dollars More (b) Foxtrot Gable and Lombard Games Guys Play The Hiding Place James Dean — The First American Teenager Kiss of the Tarantula Mr Majestyk (c) My Hustler (16mm) Ne Men Alla (Not Only But . . .)

Requiem Per Un Gringo Shao Lin King Fu Taxidi Ston Erota Kai Thanaton Vassis Ki Vassoulo Warnung Vor Einer Helligen Nutte Wanted: Baby Sitter A Woman For All Men

Continued on P.191 Cinema Papers, September— 105

Forms and Feelings under the Rising Sun

NAGISA OSHJMA heroes, before concluding that “Oshima respects the word more than the image.” Similarly, in the following year, in his entry on Oshima in The “I feel that unless we make clear the secret spirit International Encyclopaedia o f Film, John o f the Japanese, who hurry to live and hurry to Gillett merely noted that the director’s “biting die, Japan will soon be led to war again.” attacks on bourgeois traditions and hypocrisy Nagisa Oshima writing in ‘‘Tokyo Shimbun”, . . . combine social comment with outbursts of January 18, 1971 violence and sex” .

Three specific factors have probably con­ It was in 1969 that Oshima’s work first made tributed to the general reluctance to define any significant impact on Europe, when his most Oshima as an auteur. First, the fact that his recent film, Boy, was screened at the Venice films reached the West in anything but festival. By Christmas of the same year, not only chronological order, and that 12 of the 13 Boy, but Death by Hanging (1968) and Diary of features made before 1969 have still to be seen. a Shinjuku Thief (1969) had also been screened Second, those films which did arrive appeared at in London, where all three eventually found first so different in idiom (naturalism in Boy, commercial distribution.1 As did The Ceremony surrealism in Death by Hanging, formalism in (1971) within a year of its completion.2 The Ceremony) that critics were leery of Critical reaction to the individual films was situating Oshima’s work under any rubric less laudatory: “ Fascinating” , “ Brilliant” , “The general than eclecticism. Third, and certainly most exciting Japanese d irecto r since most significant, was the films’ total foreign­ Ichikawa” , “Truly original and startling” . Yet, ness: not merely the fact that they were rooted in in spite of the enthusiastic praise, critics main­ an alien culture and tradition towards which the tained a certain respectful distance, as if dealing West had maintained a rather lofty ignorance with a visiting foreign dignitary to whom they (no such inhibitions deterred European critics had not been properly introduced. Few hazarded from formulating ingenious theories about any attempt at synthesis (though Tom Milne, on Brazil’s cinema novo), but rather the fact that the evidence of Shinjuku Thief, did suggest an nearly all Oshima’s films referred, with varying extended analogy with Genet). degrees of obliqueness, to specific incidents in Even as late as 1971, in his “Screen Series” Japan’s post-war history. study, Japan, Arne Svensson confined his brief As early as 1960, in his fourth feature, Night entry on Oshima to general career details, going and Fog over Japan (withdrawn from circula­ on to note “the repeated attacks on established tion after its premiere and virtually suppressed values” and the frequent choice of criminals as for the next 10 years), Oshima was already deploying the system of coded references which was to prove one of the distinguishing (and in­ 1Shinjuku Thief, however, never obtained a censors' cer­ hibiting) characteristics of The Ceremony. A tificate and was restricted to club screenings. marriage ceremony provides the film with its ; In Australia, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief is available on 16 mm; The Ceremony has been released in 35 mm by point of departure, re-uniting the former Ronin Films; and Boy was a highlight of the 1970 Sydney members of a student militant group from the 1950s, who in turn recall other shared and Melbourne Film Festivals.

Jan Dawson

Nagisa Oshima directing the execution sequence from Death By Hanging.

ceremonies, love affairs and moments of more energetic reunion.

Apart from the fact that the film was light years ahead of its time (eight years before La Chinoise, Oshima already has his militant cell kidnapping the wrong victim), Night and Fog is a brilliant study of both radical factionalism and eroding idealism. The ideological splits, com­ promises, reconciliations and realignments that emerge from its mosaic of flashbacks, and the increasingly bourgeois settings in which its characters meet (the only one to remain true to his political principles is significantly absent from almost the entire film) are instantly and in­ ternationally recognizable phenomena. Yet although even this general a reading of it leaves the film a totally fascinating experience, Night and Fog has acquired, on the basis of its few European airings, the reputation of being an ‘in­ superably difficult’ work.

This is true only to the extent that the more one knows of the political background, the richer and more complex the film becomes: the general bourgeoisification of its intellectual characters and their individual crises do in fact correspond to specific political events. Thus the defection from the fictional group of one student, Sakamaki, has its ‘real’ basis in Stalin’s 1950 critique of the Japanese Communist Party for deviating from the internationalist line; the outbreak of the Korean war and Japan’s profitable ‘peace treaty’ with the U.S. not only explain the increasing militancy of the student cell but have their specific counterparts in the hostilities and alliances within the group; the redefinition of the Party line in the wake of both the Korean war and Stalin’s death is parallelled by the bride of the opening sequence, Nozawa, changing to a less doctrinaire lover and, even­ tually, to a ‘respectable’ husband with whom the film begins. Etcetera. Clearly Night and Fog over

Oshima rehearsing his actors, Eika Matsuda and Tatsuya Fuji, on the set of Empire of the Senses.

Opposite: Kichizo’s awareness of Sada’s desire and his acquiescence becomes plain.

Empire of the Senses.

Cinema Papers, September— 107

NAG ISA OSH IMA

Terumichi in his youth, and before his idealistic dreams confront the realities of modern Japan. The Ceremony.

Japan offers, on one level, a different experience for the Japanese New Left than it does for avid international art-house audiences, who must confine themselves to its more general truths and its stylistic brilliance.

To some extent, the same must hold true far The Ceremony, even though weddings and funerals fall more within the general experience than does attendance at secret revolutionary meetings. Once again, Oshima employs what is essentially a variations-on-a-theme technique.

Through the formal family reunions of the Sakurada dynasty, and through such changing details as the replacement of dinner mats by tables and chairs, and of kimonos by mink stoles and business suits, he unemphatically shows us the Americanization of Japanese traditions, while side by side with this, through the film’s succession of incestuous liaisons, he signals the survival of the old, empire-building urges. Once again, the individual deaths and liaisons corres­ pond to specific, and larger, events in the public domain. The marriage of Masuo’s card-carrying uncle, and the round of folk songs and anthems which marks that particular ceremony, has its ‘real life’ equivalent in the ‘popularization’ of the Japanese Communist Party line in 1956; the baseball-playing Masuo’s own wedding, with the invisible ‘pure Japanese girl’, follows closely on the signing, in 1960, of the unpopular U.S. Japanese defence treaty . . . And so on for each of the characters’ changes of situation.

Yet, although the films repay detailed in­

vestigation — in the sense that the more one knows of the specific references, the more subtle their development becomes and the more dimen­ sions they operate in — it would be false to con­ vey the impression that they have anything in common with, say, some of Nabokov’s intellec­ tual parlour games. As the prefatory quotation confirms, it is "Wit spirit of the Japanese” rather than any text-book chronology that is the real subject of Oshima’s explorations; and the land­ marks of his national history provide his material only to the extent that they seem to him the material embodiment of that death-hungry spirit.

The degree of historical knowledge necessary to appreciate his ‘difficult’ films is equivalent to that required by, say, Brecht’s Arturo Ui. Like Brecht, Oshima reduces historical movements and personages to tableaux and stereotypes, from which an assortment of stylistic devices determinedly distance us. Like Brecht, too, he reveals the myths behind apparently banal daily realities, and the crass matter that underlies many a potent myth. Indeed, many of the critically erected obstacles that have branded his cinem a as inaccessible collapse if one approaches the films as Brechtian, rather than hermetically and inscrutably Oriental.

Two precepts from Brecht’s Short Organum deserve particular consideration here. First, “ A visit, the treatment of an enemy, a lovers’ meeting, agreements about politics or business, can be portrayed as though they were simply il­

A geisha observes as Sada feeds Kichizo some food bathed in her sexual juices. Empire of the Senses. ’ ' ' ’ '

108—Cinema Papers, September

’’-. >

Masuo Sakurada (Kenzo Kawarazaki) recalling when he played baseball on the beach as a child. The Ceremony.

lustrations of general principles valid for the place in question. Shown thus, the particular and unrepeatable incident acquires a disconcerting look, because it appears as something general, something that has become a principle.” In other words, it is possible that while we from the West are busy decoding his precise references, Oshima is busy camouflaging them for Japanese audiences in order to allow the general principle to emerge from the specific incident.

-Second, “ If we ensure that our characters on the stage are moved by social impulses and that these differ according to the period, we make it harder for our spectator to identify himself with them.” In complaining, for instance, that they can’t respond to The Ceremony, because they can’t tell where realism stops and surrealism takes over (“ For all we know, it may be customary for Japanese weddings to go ahead without the bride”), Western audiences are mak­ ing the possibly erroneous assumption that Japanese spectators (of which at least one generation was taught from text books in which

Sada and the old man she visits. Empire of the Senses.

■:/ ' L ‘

NAGISA OSHIM A

Oshima’s use of ‘invisible’ characters: R, the man who survived his own hanging, and the mysterious girl lie unseen by the guests at a post-execution party. Death by Hanging.

all references to national military activity had movements of history rather than its decorative been inked out) are historically far more details which determine the shape of Oshima’s knowledgeable than they are. subject matter, a reading of the headlines rather It does not really occur to us that confusion is than the fine print is really all that’s required. In an element that Oshima has deliberately created Death by Hanging, Oshima even uses screen (through the complicated chronological struc­ titles to focus the argumentative content of the tures of both Night and Fog and The Ceremony, next dramatic scene. And while his ‘epic’ films or the inclusion of ‘invisible’ characters in both can be reduced to a succession of historical head­ The Ceremony and Death by Hanging), or that lines (like those Hollywood montage sequences, Japanese filmgoers may be as unsure of imperial some of them by Sam Fuller, which whisk us in funeral rites as we would be of the correct social 30 seconds through some era of escalating forms for sipping tea in Victoria’s Buckingham crisis), the inspiration for the more ‘limited’ Palace. films often lies in some ‘human interest’ item If Oshima is concerned to show the present as tucked away on the back pages. What the historically rooted in the past, he may also be ex­ French call the fait divers. plaining the past’s stranglehold by the fact that Boy was inspired by a true case which received the mythical version of it is usually all the pop­ brief notoriety in the Japanese press in 1966, of a ulace knows. Our foreign-ness, far from placing child trained by his parents to fall in front of us at a disadvantage in reading his films, may moving cars and simulate injuries to extort actually place us in precisely the degree of money from the terrified drivers (and preserve alienation he has employed so much artistry to their “no-claims bonus”). Even the more ob­ create. viously ‘imaginative’ Death by Hanging, in Again, like NBrecht, because it is the which the condemned man embarrassingly sur­

Eiko Matsuda (Sada) and Tatsuya Fuji (Kichizo) — 20 rooms of love, 20 styles o f lovemaking as a prelude to the ablation-castration rite. Empire of the Senses.

vives his execution, and thereby provokes numerous legal and theological debates, has its origins in a real case of a young Korean student who raped and killed two Japanese girls.

So, in spite of the versatility of his style and the number of films still unseen, it is possible to go some way-to defining a few of Oshima’s dis­ tinctive traits as an auteur up to 1975. First, however literal their origins, his films are nearly all metaphors for Japan, a nation whose spirit is shown as more at ease with death than with life.

Second, the Japanese spirit that Oshima iden­ tifies is that of imperialism (extended after the war into anti-Korean sentiment), and his films, on one level, are all meditations on empire, ex­ perienced or remembered.

Third, his films are nearly all about a youthful (idealist) dream, and its extinction when con­ fronted with the realities of Japanese society.

Because of his disaffection for this society, his heroes are nearly all outcasts from it (proscribed communists, a thief, a murderer), and it is most frequently through their eyes that the outside world is shown.

Fourth, the films nearly all build to some cathartic act of violence (an execution, hara­ kiri), the only possible resolution for irrecon­ cilable tensions.

Fifth, the outside world is not what it’s crack­ ed up to be, so perhaps in part for this reason, the films draw an unsteady line between illusion and reality, performance and sincerity. (The Shinjuku thief is not the thief he appears to be, but is playing an elaborate and ritualized game; the law-enforcement officers in Death by Hang­ ing are so carried away by their image of the murderer and his crimes that they assault the police woman brought in to re-enact the victim.)

Sixth, ritual and ceremony are a convenient halfway-house between illusion and reality, and Oshima frequently employs them: not just the formal ceremonies prescribed by religion and the state, but also the private rituals which elevate domestic routine to a form of secret ceremony.

Seventh, these repeated rituals provide the films with their form as well as their content: the narrative develops through a variations-on-atheme structure while also developing to break­ ing point the tension between theme (prescribed behaviour) and variation (the characters’ attempts at self-expression).

Eighth, whether dynastic or domestic in range, the films are nearly all chamber pieces, with the claustrophobic sets providing a material correlative for repressive social pressures.

Here (as in 7) we find, ninth, a permanent ten­ sion between forms and feelings.

Finally, the use of a wide range of distancing

Eiko Matsuda as Sada, a Japanese heroine not unlike Joan of Arc. Empire of the Senses,

Cinema Papers, September— 109

NAGISA OSHIM A

The imagery of the knife runs through the film and leads to the final climax of ablation. Empire of the Senses.

effects to prevent the specific drama on the screen from obscuring the general principles it il­ lustrates.

With even this crude and inadequate model in mind (Oshima’s style requires a small volume of its own), it is clear that the disparate surfaces of Oshima’s films disguise a coherent development of certain themes, strategies and obsessions. To which he remains as true in 1976 as in the 16‘ years preceding it. With his new film, Empire of the Senses, he has, however, broken through the barriers of critical inhibition (no one bothers about the film’s foreign-ness, everybody’s confi­ dent he understands it all) only to encounter the more powerful inhibitions of censorship and moral reprobation, both at home and abroad. In Berlin, the Criminal Police, who had shown no interest in either Night and Fog or The Ceremony, seized the film after its first festival screening in the Young Film Forum; a local magistrate judged it lacking in artistic merit (this in a city where pornography is openly screened, and advertised) and the Forum’s organizer must now face a tribunal empowered to jail him for a year.

As everyone must know by now, Empire of the Senses is a film about I’amour fou (for which

The scenes of love-making shift in locale but there is rare­ ly a private moment. Empire of the Senses.

there’s significantly no Anglo-Saxon word). Bas­ ed on a real case which attracted wide public in­ terest in 1936, it concerns the impossible love between Kichizo, a married inn-keeper, and a serving girl, Sada, whose elopement culminated in Sada, with his consent, killing her lover and being arrested four days later, radiantly happy, with his severed organ in her pocket.

Castration never having been a big turn-on in the West, it’s perhaps hard for us to understand that Sada became something of a folk heroine and a symbol of oppressed liberty. This fact alone should have given the authorities pause in judging Oshima’s version of her story. But no. In Germany, at least, it’s an open and shut case of pornography.

Yet, the extraordinary thing about Empire of the Senses is that although its principal characters spend almost the entire film copulating (in 20 different rooms and almost as many positions), it is not their bodies which in­ terest us. The couple appear doubly restricted, first by the society which outlaws their union, and then by their own bodies, the limited means through which they endeavour to express their virtually boundless desire. Their constant love­ making — while they eat, play music, talk,

Kichizo’s state of perpetual erection persists despite intrusions. Empire of the Senses.

110—Cinema Papers, September

receive visitors — is less an imperative need (though it’s plainly that as well) than a rite through which they endeavour to express a truly ineffable emotion, a sense of one-ness which their human condition belies. Like all rituals, it ultimately proves confining: the tension between forms and feelings becomes intolerable, and all other attempts at securing a more permanent fu­ sion or mutual possession having failed, the cou­ ple devises a final solution satisfactory to both.

This may not sound much like a political film, yet apart from our own inhibitions, there is no valid reason why love-making should not provide as potent a metaphor for the Japanese spirit as, say, sake drinking. The film’s title is not idly chosen: the sensuality it depicts is effec­ tively suppressed (or confined to a professional house) by .that other Empire whose troops are seen mobilizing in the streets in one of Kichizo’s rare moments outdoors. The fusing of roles to which the lovers aspire (at different moments, each ‘becomes’ the other making love to a third party) is a subversive ambition in a hierarchical society where domination is a powerful value.

A long tradition of hara-kiri — of death as the means to preserve the ideal and/or eclipse the real — might help explain the original public reaction to Sada’s ‘crime’. Yet, though more squeamish about mutilation and our private parts, we in the West also have a long tradition of linking love and death. A literary tradition, which buries the graphic, phallocentric reality beneath an avalanche of chivalrous imagery.

Was it really Samson’s hair Delilah cut off? And what were Tristam and Isolde about, if not an insatiable need for each other’s bodies?

Yet, though the love-making is graphic (quite different from pornographic), Oshima’s film is never prurient. He keeps the audience distanced from the subject, and aware that what they are watching is art rather than raw life, by contain­ ing within the film the ciphers for our own voyeurism. The chorus of embarrassed chamber­ maids, geisha girls and tea ladies who interrupt (but don’t curtail) the couple’s love-making break up any audience illusions of sharing in a privileged private moment. They also bring home the fact that such over-riding passion is still, socially, out of place. It rests, almost literally for most of the film, balanced on a knife edge. To object to the anatomical region on which the great axe falls is mere hypocrisy. By the final sequence, we have surely come to reflect that we are all implicated as part of the continuing social system which:makes such love impossible. It is not Sada, but the censor who ul­ timately wields the knife. *

“The sex that leads to death; that is enlightened by death.” Sada and Kichizo mirror Oshima’s veneration of sex. Empire of the Senses.

NAGISA OSHIM A

Empire of the Senses

The following extracts from an interview with French novelist Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues are taken from the May, 1976, issue of Positif. It is included as a complement to Jan Dawson’s ar­ ticle on Oshima and, in particular, Empire of the Senses.

Empire of the Senses was to have been shown at this year’s Perth Film Festival, but the Com­ monwealth Censor strongly suggested that it not be imported. Given this attitude by someone who has yet to see the film, and whose knowledge is limited to sensationalistic reports from overseas, it is important that a case for Oshima be heard.

Empire of the Senses is the first film by Oshima that I have seen: it gives me a great desire to know this director’s work better, since he seems to me to be the most fascinating direc­ tor of the new Japanese cinema.

Empire of the Senses is a totally erotic film.

To say that is not to state an affirmation, because now-a-days the adjective “erotic” is employed frequently for any common sexual manifestation, for everything that the French with their beautiful language call “smutty talk” , all that the well brought-up call “cunt” .

Watching this film I thought, almost all the time, of Mishima and his great book L'Ordalie des Roses. In Empire of the Senses it is at an ordeal of sex that one assists. A man, in the same way as St. Sebastian is pinned to the tree, is rivetted by his sex to the woman who loves him and who will mortally strike him with her implacable love.

It is almost too obvious to quote, in relation to this film, Georges Bataille’s famous definition of eroticism, being the approbation of life until death. Certain scenes, and I am thinking par­ ticularly of the one in which the mistress forces her lover to make love to the old ‘geisha’, who reminds him of his mother’s corpse, seem to me not only very akin to Bataille’s thinking, but even directly inspired by his work. The significance of such a scene in fact goes far beyond the notion of communion with the forebears, which is part of the Japanese religious tradition. L ’Histoire de L ’Oeil and Le Bleu du Ciel can help us to understand this better.

The real relationship between Oshima and Bataille is such that the only question that should be asked, it seems to me, by the critics, the public and the magistrature is: whether we consider Georges Bataille to be one of the greatest geniuses of this century, one of the greatest classical writers of French literature, one of the greatest philosophers of sexuality, and

one of the major exponents of the burning ques­ tion — What is eroticism? If, as it is to be hoped, the answer is yes, then one has to agree that Empire of the Senses is the most noble illustra­ tion that can be given to Bataille’s work.

Watching this pageant of images of an intensi­ ty and an incomparable force, I also thought of Balthus’ painting, not just because Balthus is married to a young Japanese who is one of the most beautiful and intelligent women I have met, but because in his work it would seem that Balthus has a lordly and feudal conception of love, somewhat like that of Tristan and Isolde, and which at the same time is specifically Japanese.

In passing, it should be noted that the role of the lover’s wife in the story is to personify the limit to be overcome, to signify the forbidding of violation so that love can flower in death. The wife plays the same role here as Canon Fulbert plays with Abelard and Heloise. She personifies the condemnation without which there would be no tragic awakening.

When the young woman, Sada, feeds her lover with food that she has put in her womb, one thinks of Pierre Jean Jouve and of the im­ portant chapter of his book Dans les Annees Profindes, in which the two future lovers ex­ change flowers which they have bathed with their sexual liquids. However, Oshima goes even further. For him it is a matter of the nutritive sex and its consumption, as the end of the film proves. ‘ A " .

Lacan, I am told, claims that the film is one of the most chaste he has ever seen. I agree with him. Eroticism enlightened by death such as Bataille conceives or preaches, is, in fact, ab­ solutely chaste, desperately pure. I do not think Madame Edwarda excited even the most ex­ citable of schoolboys. It appears that one of the most successful films of recent years, Les Valseuses, which I have not seen and certainly will not, has sexually excited at least half of the French population, women included. It will cer­ tainly not be the case of Empire of the Senses which could, on the contrary, be recommended by the regional bishoprics as a wholly salutary, instrument of terror. The glacial nature of eroticism, such as it appears in this film, comes from the nobility, the pureness, the extreme simplicity with which the question of love is con­ sidered, the absence of any frills which places it as I’ve already said, on the level of Tristan and Isolde.

Throughout the film, the young woman plays with a knife.The man meets her for the first time, when she is brandishing a knife at his wife.

Later, when they live together, every day as she shaves him she shows him the blade that will serve in the last rite. The surprise, if surprise there be in the film, is that the ritual killing of the lover is not with a knife, which is used for the ablation of the sex. I insist on the word ablation here, rather than castration, because it is not a question of deprivation, of a dimuniton, on the contrary. When the woman holds up the man’s sex like a torch — the sex she has just cut off — one feels that she has achieved the ultimate ob­ jective of love. The woman’s soul seems to be wholly concentrated in the man’s sex.

What seems very Japanese to me, and which is very beautiful, is the representation of the sex­ ual pleasure of the woman, that the Japanese knew and know how to show with astonishing in­ tensity. The famous am atory engravers, Utamaro and Hokusai, have thousands and thousands of times drawn the face of a woman embellished by sexual ecstasy, transfigured by the wave of pleasure, exalted by the orgasm. It is quite surprising that until now the influence of Utamaro and Kokusai has not been felt on the Japanese cinema — to my knowledge, I am not an expert. It could be said that Oshima con­ sciously used these splendid watercolours and

wood-engravings for the numerous close-ups of faces, which never cease to recall the beauty of Japanese eighteenth century engravings.

It is admirable that it should be a man, the director Oshima, who shows such veneration for feminine .eroticism. In Empire of the Senses, the virile character, sexually abnormal because he is in a state of almost perpetual erection, is little by little reduced to the role of object.

Towards the end of the film, he is ready to die, he only asks to be finished off. The desire to possess fully the object of her love, the fear of killing her male, seems to me a normal female fantasy, and I might add that nothing can flatter a man as much as such desire, which unfor­ tunately is shown much less often than one might wish .

The connection between the sex and the knife inevitably refers to De Sade. We are tempted to see a definite allusion in the first name of Sada, chosen by Oshima for his heroine. However, this is a fairly common name in Japan, and I con­ sider that one should rather see in this coin­ cidence a sign of natural sympathy or spon­ taneous agreement between De Sade and the sensitivity of the Japanese people. Perhaps because of the aristocratic refinement of the Marquis’ eroticism, when one thinks of Japan, the notion of aristocracy always arises. The Japanese masses with their canned foods, cluttered with cameras and transistor radios seem to be as common and ill-mannered as are the American masses. However, there are in Japan a few artists, a few writers, a few poets whose position is incomparably above the rest of the country. Oshima is one of these great lords.

It is particularly interesting that the story of Sada was not invented, but concerns an event which really took place in Japan in 1936. It is significant that this young woman, by her act, became a national heroine in Japan, a sort of Joan of Arc — and I must insist on the com­ parison. That it can be seen as a forewarning of the acts of the Kamikazes, I would not deny.

Another connection, if not relationship, between Joan of Arc, Mishima and very present-day Oshima. ★

NAG ISA O S H IM A F IL M O G R A P H Y Features: 1959 1960 I960 1960 1961 1962 1964 1964 1965 1965 1966 1967 1967 1967 1968

1968 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972

1976

Ai To Kibo No Machi (A Town of Love and Hope) Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (Naked Youth) Taiyo No Hakaba (The Sun’s Burial) Nihon No Yoru To Kiri (Night and Fog over Japan) Shiiku (The Catch) Amakusa Shiro Tokisada (The Revolt) Chiisana Boken Ryoko (A Simple Adventure) Watachi Wa Belief (I am Belief) Etsuraku (The Pleasures of the Flesh) Yunbogi No Nikki (The Diary of Yunbogi) Hakuchu No Torima (Violence at Noon) Ninja Bugeicho (Band of Ninja) Nihon Shunka-Ko (Sing a Song of Sex) Muri Shinju Nihon No Natsu (Japanese Summer: Dou­ ble Suicide) Koshikei (Death by Hanging) Kaettekita Yopparai (Three Resurrected Drunkards) Shinjuku Dorobo Nikki (Diary of a Shinjuku Thief) Shonen (Boy) Tokyo Senso Sengo Hiwa (The Man Who left his Will on Film) Gishiki (The Ceremony) Natsu No Imoto (Dear Summer Sister) Ai No Corida (Empire of the Senses). Film was made in France and the French title is L’Empire des Sens.

Television films: 1962 Kori No Naka No Seishun (A Youth in the Ice) 1963 Wasurerareta Kogun (The Forgotten Army) 1964 Hankotsu No Toride-Hachinosujo (Fort of Revolt) _ 1964 Seishun No Hi (A Tomb for Youth) 1965 Asia No Akebono (The Dream of Asia) 1968 Daitoa Senso (The Pacific War) 1969 Mo Taku-To To Bunkadaikakumei (M ao Tse-tung and the Cultural Revolution)

Cinema Papers, September— 111

PHILIPPE MORA Born in Paris in 1949, Australian filmmaker Philippe Mora became well-established as a painter at an early age. And it was while painting in London that Mora made his first feature, “Trouble in M olopolis” . Several years later, he co-scripted the documentary feature, “The Double Headed Eagle” , for producer Sanford Lieberson. Then, in 1973, he directed and co­ wrote his famous compilation film, “ Swastika” . This personal account of Hitler and the Third Reich was an immediate critical success and was chosen as the British entry for the Of­ ficial Festival at Cannes that year.

In 1974, Mora completed his second feature-documentary, “ Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” , and was again selected

for Cannes, this time in the Critics W eek. M ora’s second fic­ tional feature, “ Mad Dog M organ” , a study of the famous Australian bushranger, was made in late 1975 and is now in release throughout Australia. “Mad Dog M organ” was also notable among the Australian films at Cannes this year in that it was the first to be sold to the U .S. for a substantial cash ad­ vance.

While in Australia, prior to his trip to New York to organize the U .S. release of “ Mad Dog M organ” , Mora spoke with ‘Australian’ film critic M ike Harris about “ Mad D og” and his career in general.

Because Sandy Lieberson was Peter Sellers’ agent, before he became a producer, and Lieberson Well, Swastika didn’t get a very once bought a painting of mine at wide distribution, although it’s an exhibition in London. So I gave starting to in the U.S. Double him the Phantom script since he Headed Eagle was seen at a few thought Peter would be very in­ film festivals, but it wasn’t as im­ terested. I then met with Sellers, and this went on for about a year. mediately gripping as Swastika.

Ted Kotcheff was going to direct it How did you get the idea to do and Leslie Lindner produce it. It was going to be financed by King “Eagle”?

Features Syndicate, of New York, I came to the subject of Hitler in who own the Phantom, but the a most lateral way, really. I wrote a whole thing fell through — and that screenplay named The Phantom was my first hard lesson in show­ Versus the Fourth Reich, which was business.

Anyway, in the course of work­ a black comedy about the Phan­ tom, the comic strip character, ing on the black comedy, I started tracking down Hitler in South doing serious reading about Hitler, America. Hitler was 80-years old and at the end of that year I did a and he had a 21-year old son called treatment for a straight documen­ Heinrich Hitler, who wore shorts tary of how Hitler came to power, and long white socks. Peter Sellers which was The Double Headed was going to play Hitler at 80. And Eagle Heinrich. And the Phantom.

And Swastika came out of that?

Who decided that?

Could you have used the same technique of lip-reading and dub­ Peter Sellers. bing? It’s tremendously effective in “Swastika” . . .

And how did you, a nice boy from Melbourne, get a big name like Well, that was one of the reasons Peter Sellers to agree to such a I was able to raise the money for thing? both films. I argued to the producers — who in this case were

the financiers—that documentaries were a lost art and that they could be fantastic if certain things were avoided.

For example, the narration should be avoided so that audiences could make up their minds and not merely be told what to think.

However, abolishing narration would mean that the people making the film, namely me, would have to work harder to make a coherent story knowing that there was no fall-back of, “Oh well, we can get a narrator in to patch it up.” And that’s how most documentaries are made. They cut it all together and then they get in a voice to cover the splices.

The concept of dropping the narrator was very important to Swastika — it was the key point because it meant that the story had to be told with images, and that’s what made it unusual.

Whatever happened to “ Double Headed Eagle”?

112—Cinema Papers, September

is the same thing true in “Mad Dog”?

Not nearly to that extent, but still to a great extent. You see I am very visually orientated, because I started off as a painter. For ex­ ample, in Mad Dog I would draw the shots the night before in comic strip form. I have always been in­

volved in comic strips; most of my paintings were comic strip orien­ tated. These drawings I would then show to the people on the set the following day, that way everyone knew, and could see, what was go­ ing to be done.

Hitchcock and Kubrick used the same technique . ..

Oh, it’s as old as the hills. Eisens­ tein used it for many of his films. A lot of directors do it . . .

Do you see any parallels between “Swastika” and “Mad Dog”?

A lot of the techniques that went into Mad Dog went i nto Swastika. But it would be difficult for me to pinpoint the actual similarities.

I would say, however, that Mad Dog is not nearly as innovative a feature film as I knew that Swastika and Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? were, and that’s because it was the first film that I had done on that scale. I just wasn’t confident enough to be tremendous­ ly innovative. I was definitely reserved and played safe a lot of the time.

Do you regret that?

No, not at all.

Why not?

I had to. I was very conscious that I was being conservative in style: wide-shots, deep focus, no zooms — that was one of the things 1 said straight out: “No zooms” .

Also, no low-contrast filters. So everything is hazy and dreamy and Vilmos Zsigmond and The Long Goodbye. It was all sort of text­ book . . .

Anyway, Dennis was almost an afterthought. When I spoke to him — I’d sent the script ahead — he was obviously involved in the character, and to a degree that the other actors weren’t.

Don’t you think his reaction might have been connected with the fact that he isn’t exactly what you might call busy, and the others are?

Henry Hathaway and George Stevens, people like that. As a result, his technical skill is quite astonishing.

For example, if we did a wideshot and I said, “Just go, and I won’t tell you when I’m going to cut” , which I often did, Dennis was quite remarkable. If I didn’t say “cut” when he expected me to, which was very rarely, he could in­ stantly duplicate that improvisation in close-up afterwards.

The technical side of that kind of acting is usually neglected in Den­ nis’ case, for a start because he is modest about it, also because he en­ joys the public image of being crazy. I would describe Dennis as a very highly-skilled technician. I would definitely use him again if there was a part.

It could have been. That’s always a factor that can prejudice an actor towards any particular part, but I don’t believe it was that way in this case. The thing is that Dennis What about Hopper? Did you wasn’t getting a lot of money for really have trouble with him? There Mad Dog. He had made one film, are many versions of what went on Tracks, which he did very cheaply, but the film that he made before that was Kid Blue, for which he got The one thing that you must $400,000 — about the budget of So you don’t think that his per­ remember is that I selected Dennis Mad Dog at the time that we to play the part. started. Money doesn’t come into it sonality could cope with actually with actors when you are working having to conform to the role rather with a low budget as we had on than . ..

Why? Mad Dog. Well, there are two schools of ac­ Because, well . . . he certainly wasn’t the first choice. The first What did Hopper bring to the ting. On the one extreme you have Laurence Olivier, who is the choice was Stacy Keach. I should role? supreme technician, and on the say straight out that Dennis ended up being the choice after speaking He brought an insanity to the other you have Marlon Brando, to all these people, but the first role, and an intensity to it that most who is the supreme intuitive in­ choice was Keach and next was actors would have found impossible terpreter, and who, incidentally, has recently started to become a Martin Sheen. I spoke to both ac­ to create. supreme technician. There is that tors, and I also spoke to Jason Miller, and he was a definite Did you have to control that? Or kind of polarization in actors. possibility. was he able to sustain that through What about the other actors in shooting? the film? How much did they bring Jason Miller from “ Nickel Dennis’ public image, and he to their roles and how much did you Ride”? cultivates it because he enjoys it, is have to give them?

Yes, I haven’t seen the film, but as you know a very wild, hardThat depended to a great extent I’ve spoken to him. I mean, how drinking, hard-living, 24-hour par­ would you know whether Dennis ty. But in fact, he is an actor who on the importance of the part in the Hopper can act after seeing Gun­ has had 20 years experience in structure of the story. For example, fight at the OK Corral? You can’t Hollywood, working with some of Frank Thring: I discussed his part judge actors from their films, you the toughest directors in terms of with him in quite a bit of detail. We discipline — the “old guard” of mutually decided that Cobham, really can’t!

would be based on C harles Laughton’s performance in Island of Lost Souls; and that’s what Frank did.

What about other casting? You appear to have been at some lengths to create conflict between the in­ dividuals in much the same way as the characters would have been in conflict with Morgan — say, the penultimate sequence with Wallas Eaton . . .

That’s a beautiful example of Dennis’ skill: he somehow under­ stood the class differences in­ tuitively. Most of the bushrangers were Irish, and the Colonialists were English — it was Ireland all over again — and the bushrangers, it you want to take it that far, were more political outlaws than criminals.

But it’s true, he did understand the class system, because that’s the whole point of the scene; the whole pathos of it.

What helped there was that although Wallas had, as he told me, been involved with improvisation before — with Joan Littlewood — he was still, essentially, an actor in the more traditional mould.

When he was about to do the scene, I said to him: “ You know, Dennis is tremendously emotional­ ly involved, and he’s, er, you know, Method.” And Wallas said: “ Don’t worry about that, I’ve done a lot of improvisation before.” But he hadn’t , I think, bargained for what he got with Dennis, who really put him through the ropes. But Wallas was very good because he reacted in exactly the way MacPherson would have in that situation. He was really very, very good; almost to the point of upstaging Dennis.

It was a real class hostility Cinema Papers, September— 113

PH ILIPPE MORA

On location in Morgan country: director Philippe Mora beside the Panavision camera.

“ Hopper brought an insanity to the role, an intensity most other actors would have found impossible to create.” Dennis Hopper as Daniel Morgan.

in the film business and we had been talking for at least 10 years about the film that we would one day make. Mike was the first guy I met who was professionally involv­ ed in filmmaking — I think he was a newsreel cam eram an with Cinesound or something when I first met him in Melbourne. He brought all his experience — which is vast — to the film. He was camera operator on Performance, Walkabout, A Clockwork Orange, and he shot a lot of Barry Lyndon.

But no one had* given him the op­ portunity he needed to be Director of Photography. Yet, I would regard him as being one of the top 10 cinematographers in the world.

He is outstanding.

only after we cut it together that people began saying, “ Well, you might get an ‘R’.”

Would that have mattered?

Not to me, it wouldn’t. As it happened we got an ‘M’, which pleased the distributor. You see, I don’t know by what standards peo­ ple would call it violent. It’s just ab­ surd. But you are talking about Australian critics.

But surely there is something in the film to cause that reaction: the exploding head, for example . . .

It’s amazing; because that shot is only 15 frames long, which is vir­ tually instantaneous. The thing is that Mad Dog is an emotionally “Mad Dog is not a violent film, it is an emotionally violent film, one which has a terribleYou wrote the “Mad Dog” script story to tell.” yourself and it was obviously im­ violent film. If you examine it cold­ mensely successful in terms of con- bloodedly, it is not a violent film: between the two individuals woufd have done. But to get that ex- veying what you intended, because such violence as is there is underly­ because they were of two acting act feeling across, Dennis Hopper you raised the money on the strength ing the whole time. And because it styles and the co n fro n tatio n doesn’t have to be Daniel Morgan; of it. How did you learn to write a is a violent film emotionally, that’s reflected itself in a real way, in a he has to be Dennis Hopper freak- “selling script” like that? why people talk of it as a violent film. They are reading into it, and it qualitative way. They really had ing some other actor out while berespect for each other. ing filmed doing it.

I learned to write scripts in becomes a combined effect. Certain < school, writing essays in English c ritic s are co nfusing th e ir You re-created the gap, then . . .

Did you run many old films for classes. I have always been more emotional reaction with what is ac­ people involved, to give them the feel articulate on paper than I have been tually shown on the screen, and as Yes. There was a cultural gap in of what you intended? orally, but I don’t think that Mad far as I am concerned, that is a the story and there was a cultural Dog is a particularly outstanding tribute to a film. And that’s how it gap in reality.

No. The only person I watched script. As far as its appeal goes, I should be. I mean, it is emotionally films with was Mike Molloy, the think it’s obvious, in as much as it’s violent because it tells a terrible So you made the casting choice Director of Photography. We look- the archetype of the underdog and story — a hard story. deliberately for the effect . . . ed at most of the bushranger films the rebel, which is a theme that is that still exist; we got them from instantly recognizable and underWere you concerned about this Soifie of the exchanges were fhc National Archive.^In terms of standable all over the world. Trying during the scripting and making of lucky, but a lot of the film was cast photographic style, Prime Cut, for to analyse Mad Dog on the most the film? on that basis. In other words, a real example, would have been a film we elemental level, I would say it’s I couldn’t say that I was. I mean conflict as opposed to a conflict looked at very closely to see how about a guy who is beaten about, when I was making Mad Dog I was that is artificially constructed over they got those effects. For example, but whose spirit isn’t broken, more concerned about whether the a number of hours of rehearsal. It’s the sequences in the sunflower much easier if you can make it real, fields. That was the look ol the film The film has been accused of be- rushes would be delivered in time Well, frankly, there were quite a that i wanted and I wanted to show ¡ng excessively violent. Has this for me to see them before the next few actors who were freaked out by Molloy. reaction given you any second day’s shooting.

You may laugh, but it’s true. The being faced with Dennis Hopper. thoughts about that facet of the crucial creative decisions are made But if that’s being filmed and they What other films did you look at? film’s content? before shooting and after shooting: are in costume, then they are freak- ed out by Daniel Morgan. You We screened Ned Kelly so that No. I just find that ludicrous. I who is in it and what is left out. But can’t often artificially re-create we would know what not to do. don’t see the film as violent in as the actual shooting of a film, on the genuine feelings to that degree of much as I don’t think of it as being kind of budget we were working intensity. And Dennis was aware of What did Molloy bring to the gratuitously violent. But it’s with, is really down to the basics of, this element — I don’t know to film? something that didn’t come up until JT f it rains today we’re screwed, what extent, but he was aware of the film was completed; the issue because we haven’t got a thing to the fact that he genuinely was Molloy brought a lot. I should never emerged. The censor was the shoot indoors”. freaking people out on screen in the preface this by saying that Mike furthest thing from my mind when I Continued on P.188 same way that Daniel Morgan Molloy is one of my oldest friends was making the film, and it was 114—Cinema Papers, September

Noel Purdon Kate Millett observes with her usual lucidity in Sexual Politics that: “Although ‘straight’ society may. be affronted at the thought homosexual art is by no means without insights into heterosexual life, out of whose milieu it grows, and whose notions it must, perforce, imitate and repeat, even parody.”

The trouble is that, when we look at the homosexual cinema, that is largely where it has stayed.

It has failed to create a new consciousness, however much it sowed seeds in the unconscious.

It has collaborated in every repressive action, and failed, for reasons of low collective strength and economic power, to contest the system in which its audience is oppressed.

What is gay cinema? A leviathan monster, swimming in the depths, manifested by odd shapes on the surface. An art, like that of all the other maker groups in cinema, largely taken oyer by its patron. Yet to read most criticism, biography and even anecdotal writing about the cinema, is to receive a contrary impression, all the more revealing because it is so virulently anti-gay. Here is a piece of neat poison from the melting-hearted fantasist of goodwill, Frank Caprá: “Judging by contemporary Hollywood films, the United States was made up of sexpots, homosexuals, lesbians, Marquis de Sades, junkies. Forgotten were the hard work­ ing stiffs that came home too tired to shout or demonstrate in the streets . ... who paid their bills and tax­ es, and prayed they’d have enough left over to keep their kids in college, despite their knowing that some were pot­ smoking, parasitic parent haters. In England the homosexuals minced across the screen and waved their hankies at the audience. So few real actors could get work, Peter Sellers had to play all the parts.”

Need it be said that the reality was otherwise?

As late as 1969, 63 per cent of red-blooded Above: Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet. The poet kills himself beside the shadow from a wire sculpture of Cocteau’s head.

Americans thought that gay people were “harm­ ful to American life” and dealt with them accor­ dingly.

Whatever novelists or dramatists wrote before he hit the screen, the 1940s homo­ sexual became neatly transposed into an alco­ holic (Wilder’s Last Weekend in 1945) or a Jew (Crossfire in 1947). When he did appear as himself late in the 1950s, what a model he provided. You have your choice of going straight (Tea and Sympathy in 1957), being eaten (Suddenly Last Summer), or simply committing suicide at the decent moment (Advise and Con­ sent in 1962, The Children’s Hour in 1962, and The Sergeant in 1968). Show me a happy homo­ sexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse was the message long before Boys in the Band. The same melancholic line is found in the British “ problem” film like Victim (1961), A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Leather Boys (1963).

Worst of all are the later American offerings of this kind. In these films, the homosexual graduates from being a moster to a Disturbed Person, much as Szasz describes the medieval witch being transformed into the modern hysteric. These films are particularly perfidious.

Homosexuals are embedded in situations: neurotic parties, murder, crime, gaols, loonie. bins, in which, whether or not the situation is their fault, they must cop it in the end. Like adulterous women in nineteenth century novels, they won’t make it past the last chapter. An odour of vice and death clings about them, doomed scapegoats carrying the weight of society’s repressed dreams.

Ingenious sexists even hit on the happy device of demonstrating that the agencies responsible for the persecution or murder of homosexuals were themselves homosexual. The masterpiece

of this genre is The Detective, and the logic is of that sublime kind which has to believe that the genocidal slaughter of Jews was perpetrated by Zionist conspiracy.

A list could be made of further films ex­ tending a few basic themes: (i) Deep and agonized friendships, but no screwing (King Rat, Midnight Cowboy). The male bond, whether in Chapavev or Butch Cassidy, often cements itself by the ritualized in­ clusion of a shared woman; (ii) The queer as a necessary character in in­ ternational society — II Mare, Darling, Night Games, Boom, La Dolce Vita; (iii) The homosexual feelings of the normal man undergoing a crisis — Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf, or Jodorowsky’s El Topo; and (iv) More loonies and sickies, preferably ar­ tistic like Tchaikovsky or Ashenbach/Mahler. : There is now scarcely a director who has not depicted homosexual behaviour — Fellini, Ber­ tolucci, Antonioni, Griffi, Cavanni, Bellocchio, Bolognini among the Italians; Chabrol, Godard, Buñuel, Truffaut, (but naturally the person who gets killed in Day for Night is the gay one), Polanski, Shinoda, Losey, Corman, etc.

Unfortunately, the experience of trying to gain any identity from these films is like sucking a dry orange. Whatever homo-erotic content the Dream had, it kept it pretty latent.

Bonnie and Clyde is a typical late example. Its scriptwriters, Newman and Benton, originally ^thought of making Clyde gay. But normalcy prevailed. Instead, Clyde — like his pal C. W. Moss — suffers from some unspecified sexual hang-up. Once again “the love that dare not speak its name” received a bonk on the head just in case it started muttering.

Best survivors are the subversive icons set up Cinema Papers, September— 115

Brando as the heavy-lidded slut in The Wild One. A posed still with Yvonne Doughty.

almost in spite of themselves: Brando’s heavylidded slut in The Wild One, lusted after furtive­ ly by Lee Marvin and explicitly quoted in the erotic fantasies of Anger’s Scorpio Rising.

Recently a_ number of gay critics such as Parker Tylert ex Movie editor Robin Wood, who has just “come out” in print, the reviewers for Fag Rag, Gay Sunshine, Gay News, and an equal number of enlightened sexualists like Ray­ mond Durgnat, have begun to play their part in enlarging a gay response to cinema. Most of them, however, are still considering the depic­ tion of homosexual types within films, or films about gays.

It must be clear that what we understand by gay cinema cannot merely be the same as the depiction of gays in films. It includes the whole creative process and working relationship ex­ perienced by a gay mentality employed in cinema. In this area, we are concerned not so much with a cinema about gays as with a cinema by and for gays. That means, in the first in­ stance, the economic power of the producer; in the second, the consciousness of the gay director; in the third, the skill of the gay actor; and in the fourth, the interpretative power of the gay critic.

And the contemplation of the present state of such a nucleus makes a sad enough spectacle.

Of homosexual directors of the first rank, Pasolini is murdered, Warhol taken over by the moralist Morissey, and Paradjanov still im­ prisoned in a Siberian labour camp. Of homo­ sexual producers, most cannily prefer to direct porn, and make no bones about it. And of homosexual actors, most are in the role of ser­ vicing the sexual fantasies of a society other than their own; i.e. by participating almost exclusive­ ly in straight films. As for criticism, the science of gay aesthetics has suffered by being used as a data-gathering system for sociology.

So, having steadfastly pushed Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra and the statisticians down the drain, what’s the next step that a gay film criticism can take? Whatever homosexual satisfaction one may derive from Tarzan, Bomba the Jungle Boy, Robin Hood, Tom Sawyer, Flash Gordon, Maciste or Hercules, one pays the penalty exacted either by regression or camp: i.e. a slight but definite softening of the mind.

The first task is one of reclamation, of redefinition of the work of the gay impulse in classic cinema. With a different focus then, let’s look at the careers of some notable directors and actors.

116—Cinema Papers, September

Eisenstein’s visual and lyric feeling found constant expres­ sion in landscapes of muscular flesh. Bezhin Meadow.

I DIRECTORS Sergei Eisenstein discussed his homosexual­ ity as freely as he could with his first bio­ grapher, Marie Seton. (Significantly, it is a topic completely ignored by Yon Barna’s more recent account). In these Moscow conversations, the director chose to view it as a neurotic phase which he was gradually expurging through his films. He explained the creation of the Crown Prince Dimitri in Ivan, for example, as a direct working out of a homosexual mother fixation, thus accepting the insulting masterstroke of psy­ chiatry in which “queer” and “ motherfucker” reached identity.

Eisenstein’s dutiful swallowing of this last hoary old chestnut probably owes as much to his fear of Stalinist reaction as to his reading of Freud,who himself tried to move beyond it. Like Freud, he was fascinated by the homosexual Leonardo, drawing many of his ideas on dialec­ tical montage from the earlier artist’s drawings and notebooks. * But from the late 1920s he was still under strong State and popular pressure to view homo­ sexuality as a weakness. Though homosexuals might be creative geniuses, they were still flawed , by mysterious oedipal complexes. In their narrative line, Eisenstein’s two epics accept, therefore, every traditional cliche of hetero­ sexual relationships: strong, authoritative heroes, pale and beautiful heroines, suitors in comic rivalry.

His visual and lyric feeling, however, finds constant expression in the landscapes of muscular male flesh in erotically tortured position. The beginning of Potemkin in the crew’s quarters, the end of Bezhin Meadow, the battle scenes of Ivan and Nevsky, the Mexican footage throughout, call to mind Michelangelo’s similar expressions of confined and enslaved energy.

The boil almost burst during the location shooting in Mexico, financed by Sinclair Lewis, and production managed by his brother-in-law.

The accusations of homosexuality in this Fiasco serve primarily the same function that they always do in right-wing oppression. That is, they weaken and smear; so it is difficult to disen­ tangle a correct line from them.

Thus one can derive a certain bitter amuse­ ment from reading accounts of the last days of the Nixon government, with Kissinger, Erlich­ mann, Dean, Nixon and Haig, all jibing about

Kaye Dunaway admires Warren Beatty’s weapon. Bonnie was gay in the original script, but writers Newman and Benton gave way to pressure. Bonnie and Clyde.

Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising.

Andy Warhol’s My Hustler.

Flesh in erotically tortured positions, from Bezhin Meadow.

Fisenstein, free of the drill exercises of the Soviet Union and the silly closets of Hollywood, began to relax and expand in the sensual sun of Mexico. Que Viva Mexico!

In Nosferatu, the repressed sexual energy bursts through as vampirism.

Ulli Lommel’s Tenderness of the Wolves.

each other’s limp wrists and men friends. In each case, an oppressed class is merely used by the oppressors as a method of competing with each other.

What seems clear is that Eisenstein, free of the drill exercises of the Soviet Union and the silly closets of Hollywood, began to relax and expand in the sensual sun of Mexico. He got Bacchic with handsome extras; he took photos of bare flesh; he did drawings of Jesus Christ naked on the cross with his penis snaking up the two thieves.

All this was too much, not just for the C atholic M exicans, but for the sober, authoritarian and puritan Stalinism of the Lewises as well. Customs scandals, border con­ fiscations, and Kremlin denunciations in tele­ gram form, suddenly left Eisenstein in the posi­ tion of many another hapless poofter caught with his trousers down.

Sans film, sans money and sans practically everything, he was left to survive as best he could .in the black rathole of the Soviet 1930s, bravely defending his “degeneracy” , and living asexually with sympathetic women friends. “ And many people here, including myself, think he is some kind of pervert”, was what his shocked production manager wrote to Lewis from Mexico.

Friedrich Murnau was an alien, first in Ger­ many where he was born, and then in California, where he was killed in a car crash. The fact that his Philippino chauffeur was also his lover im­ mediately gave rise to a long tradition of Hollywood legend which had them having sex at the time of the crash. (Similar stories were later told about Jayne Mansfield. Kenneth Anger accepts them as symbolic truth. Lotte Eisner, Murnau’s biographer, gives a different account).

Murnau’s homosexuality existed in a 1920s Berlin, now famed for its decadence, but in fact governed by the inhuman sexual laws of the German Penal Code. Trained as an art historian, he seems early to have sublimated his sexual feeling into the formalism and aesthetics of composition, especially in Faust, where bodies assume the shapes of classical painting, and into an acceptance of that morality whereby the highest form of physical being is purity. The Boy in Blue (1919), with its Dorian Gray-like script, came as near the topic as he dared at the time. But in Nosferatu, this repressed sexual energy, denied expression in positive forms, bursts through as vampirism, just as it does in I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Tenderness of the

Wolves, where it is explicitly homo-erotic. Mur­ nau includes a telling scene in Nosferatu’s castle in which Gustav von Wangenheim, who plays the young hero, leaps lustily from bed, strips to the waist and stretches and leaps in his morning ablutions. The emphasis on his rude health and youthful vigour leads directly to the vampire’s first attack.

Later in Hollywood, Murnau became famous for his deliberate casting of gay actors in central parts in his films — like Von Stroheim’s ac­ tivities with whips, Griffith’s penchant for little girls, or the cocaine-induced performances of the Sennett comedies. This was tolerated by the colony as long as it was not broadcast outside.

But, in spite of the conventional nature of the sexuality actually shown in his American films, Murnau had constant trouble with producers.

His sexual and cinematic dream, like those of Eisenstein and Pasolini, sought out more ‘primitive’ peoples to enact it. Abandoning his elaborately artificial town-sets, machinery and studio villages, Murnau found his last great ex­ periment in a new film stock and a new physical reality. Using this stock,- he ‘fixed’ the human body in a way never seen in moving images since Muybridge. Tabu, moreover, was shot on loca­ tion in the South Pacific. Collaborating at first with the documentarist Robert Flaherty, Mur­ nau finally made his clearest film celebrating the beauty and cruelty of human sexuality. He never lived to see its reception.

Jean Cocteau, of all the workers in cinema considered here, was certainly the most for­ tunate existentially. His life spanned a period in Paris when homosexual art and lifestyles were a major ingredient of the beau monde and of French culture.

Since he knew personally Proust, Gide, Diaghilev, Poulene, Genet, and a host of minor gay artists, such as the actor, De Max, and the critic, Daudet, he had at least a feeling of living freely, and indeed swimming, in an environment in which his sexuality was not unique. it was, of course, still subject to attack, notably from Breton and the surrealists on the one side, and from the co n serv ativ e academicians on the other. But Cocteau was cushioned by his wealth, his ingenuity, his con­ tacts in high places, and his general alliance of himself with that part of society which did the oppressing, rather than being the oppressed.

Moreover, he had the cheek and good fortune to ask his actors to audition for him naked, and subsequently to live with several of them.

Cinema Papers, September— 117

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Rudolph Valentino was hysterically adored by women and envied by straight men for his screen roles as a heterosexual master. With Nita Naldi in Blood and Sand.

Valentino as the bullring urchin in Blood and Sand.

An American in Paris, a catalogue of the classic gestures and facial expressions of camp. Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron.

In spite of these advantages, Cocteau was still hedgy in his films about the subject of homo­ sexuality. In Blood of-a Poet, the hotel of the un­ conscious is full of children and hermaphrodites.

Naked black angels bear away the casualties of repressed and ambiguous loves. Cocteau, in both style and content, thus becomes concerned, not with Sartre’s being (etre), but with Paraitre — “appear” in both senses of the word. Manifesta­ tion in this process may also become surface and disguise.

Cocteau’s inner process of homosexuality becomes outwardly translated as monstrosity, (Beauty and the Beast and the Man-Horse and Man-Dogs in Testament of Orpheus), or into a formal fascination with the process of transla­ tion itself. (See particularly the arcane hiero­ glyphic prologue to Blood of a Poet).

On a further level of technique, fore­ shadowing Genet, Cocteau’s mythopoeic trans­ cendence of the notion of “inversion” gives rise to a cinem a whose g re a te st sty listic characteristics are reverse-motion, mirror reflec­ tion and switch of positive/negative.

Vincent Minnelli’s biography is not clear whether he was gay or genuinely bisexual. But his creation of a particular style of cinema is suf­ ficiently striking to merit attention. While Cocteau’s Gaystyle is classical, Minnelli’s is New York rococo, all curlicue, penthouse, chiffon and the New Look. Even in his non­ musical films, this taste expresses itself in a fascination with shooting through a decor, e.g. the wrought iron gates in Two Weeks in Another Town.

In Minnelli’s comedies, pair-relationships are disguised by being part of a musical gang, though they remain fundamentally heterosexual and are resolved two-by-two. The apotheoses of this society is, always the Show. In spite of measles, hell and high soda water, It always Goes On, chinned up by some little battler like Judy; and it is always a hit.

These comedies of manners reveal Minnelli’s

economic commitment of his sexuality to the wealthy and ruling class (the “angel”, the producer, the fashionable audience), just as thoroughly as Cocteau’s romantic tragedies do his. Without Cocteau’s genius and Minnelli’s talent, this sort of thing is merely camp; and even in Minnelli’s best films it slides into it.

Fashion parades and miniature drag shows abound; Gene Kelly with a check tablecloth over his head frequently doing his apfelmadchen routine. A set of still frames from An American in Paris alone would provide a catalogue of the classic gestures and facial expressions of camp.

Camp in the critical sense, (as distinct from the popular Australian sense where it is still synony­ mous with homosexual), is an adoration for Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler.

Shirley Bassey, old musicals, Noel Coward revues, arch and flip backchat, nerves, indolence and modish irony.

Part of the trouble with camp as a cultural phenomenon, in spite of the biting power of its parody, has been its determined and insensate frivolity. Combined with a fuckwitted roman­ ticism inherited from women’s weepies (deser­ tions, bathroom vomitings, tantrums in expen­ sive restaurants) it is a modern and debased form of rococo. It is the perfect art-form for an oppressed minority with newfound economic power, determined now to flounce and loll around, and be the collective twit that everyone said it was. This is a situation as true of women in the eighteenth century as it is of gay men in the 20th. Twentieth century women have had the excellent sense to reject it.

Its first cousin is bourgeois drag, and the sinister cult of domestic royalty. The trouble is that the costumes, gestures and diction involved are those of the fluffy brained and vicious idiots who are both the greatest casualties of sexism and its loyal carriers, swathed in acres of vulgar and costly material, for which the only just fate seems some terrible Jacobean revenge. Drag queens would do history a greater service by

I 18—-Cinema Papers, September

Jean Cocteau brings an image to life.

dressing up as out-of-work prostitutes, ragged Arab women, African domestics consumed with hatred for their masters, Victorian feminists be­ ing force-fed in gaol.

Otherwise, for the straight consumers, camp is the wonderful equivalent of the obedient nigger-minstrels, who demonstrated “ what rhythm dem blacks got and how deys singin’ cos deys so happy” . The genre has even spawned parthenogenetic offspring in the form of macho camp. The moustache is its emblem, the sly eyes its process. Burt Reynolds, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman and Warren Beatty have es­ tablished a type of chic New Man who rolls his eyes and pokes faces, mostly for the edification of cool women. I do not find myself moved at the moment to celebrate it, though perhaps it is an advance on John Wayne.

Seeing what sort of image the gay actor has created is as illuminating as studying the work and style of directors.

II ACTORS The great examples from the early period of the cinema are the twin pin-ups, Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro. Hysterically adored by women and envied by straight men for their screen roles as heterosexual masters, they were at the same time set up as sexual objects, passively posing in a near nudity astonishing for its time, or quite directly the victims of male sadism (the flogging in Son of the Sheik) and the female vamp (the bite in Blood and Sand). Yet, all went further even than this. The fact that both Valentino’s wives were gay (they were part of Nazimova’s circle) has given rise to the speculation that he was as well. Certainly he presented to Novarro his favourite dildo, and maintained a secret life carefully mystified by the studio, with the collaboration of Pola Negri.

Novarro’s gayness came to light only when in later years he was the victim of a particularly

In Rebel Without A Cause, the love between James Dean and Sal Mineo almost surfaces, though a woman (Natalie

Wood) always presides as a chaperon.

brutal murder. His killers escaped with the sort of sentence usually reserved for shoplifting — after all, they were defending their virtue. The last victim in this line of outright killings, as dis­ tinct from life-long oppressions, was Sal Mineo, the boy James Dean never fucked in Rebel, shot by a youth in 1975.

It’s easy to see why gay actors should general­ ly keep it quiet. The affairs with other men con­ ducted by Charles Laughton and Laurence Harvey were made public only after their deaths.

Montgomery Clift was in a semi-permanent state of nervous breakdown. John Gielgud plays it all with his usual reserve and decorum, and Helmut Berger is presented to the cinema sub­ media as “bisexual” . And when room was made for actors to express this sexuality in screen parts, the types created, however good the per­ formances involved, almost always had perjorative associations: blackmailed headmaster (Dirk Bogarde), giggling psychopath (Richard Widmark) portrait-of-Dorian-Gray (Helmut Berger), sinister international queen (Sidney Greenstreet), nervous nelly (Harry Langdon) or anaesthetic pedant (Clifton Webb).

Nazimova’s lesbian circle was replaced by Dietrich’s liberated ladies, and there was even the usual double-standard heterosexist relish of female homosexuality. The affairs of Dietrich, Claudette Colbert and Celeste Holm were pop­ ular gossip and were more or less condoned. But a sure way of denoting a male star was to paint him queer. Cary Grant, with his flip wit and zany clowning, was a natural target, and soon appeared in print as “the Queen of the Fairies” .

A wide and contradictory variety of others found themselves in bed together, tarred with the same brush and feathered from the same pillow: Van Johnson, Danny Kaye, Tony Curtis, Richard Widmark, Burt Lancaster — the butch­ er the better. And the more wild and inaccurate the sexual reports the less the scandal sheets cared, since many of these men were straight.

Continued on P.179

James Dean and Jim Backus in the violent physical fight from Rebel Without A Cause. With Ann Doran.

Ratso (Dustin Hoffman) and Joe (Jon Voight) share a deep and agonized friendship in Midnight Cowboy but do not fuck.

Mr Normal (Rock Hudson) and Mrs Normal (Doris Day).

Pillow Talk.

Cinema Papers, September— 119

Above: HRH The Duke of Edinburgh (President of the Australian Conservation Foun­ dation) being briefed by John Heyer for his role in the pre-title sequence of The Reef.

John Heyer is known to most Australians for his film about the mailman on the Birdsville Track, “ Back of Beyond” (1954). He is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker with a long list of short films and an impressive array of awards to his credit. Much of his work has been in producing and directing sponsored documentaries, a field in which he demands and receives complete freedom. He has spent many years with the Shell Oil Company whom he regards as an enlightened sponsor.

A critic’s filmmaker, his films have consistently won major international awards. “ Back of Beyond” won the Venice Grand Prix Assoluto in 1954, and, in 1958, Britain won the Coupe de Venizia with six short films, four of which were produced by John Heyer. At 66 years, he is still working at full pace, dividing his time between his London and Sydney offices. When interviewed for Cinema Papers, by Gordon Glenn and Ian Stocks, Heyer was at Supreme Films in Sydney putting the final touches to his feature documentary for the Australian Conservation Foundation, “The R e e f’.

Did you choose to make a career in documentaries, or was it a matter of circumstances?

Until such time you get a reputation, and people give you money with no strings, documen­ tary-provides the greatest freedom.

I started my career working in a studio, Effett Films in Melbourne, and gravitated towards documen­ tary by creative and economic necessity. When you start out, you take anything you can get, because there is the prime requirement of earning money. I made commer­ cials, training films, anything.

My first documentary was for a mining company. I heard they were interested in making a film and I presented myself to them. The man in charge was a Mr MacKenzie. I showed him some of my poetry and 120—Cinema Papers, September

still photographs. I like to think they influenced him; maybe I am kidding myself.

After that film I had to go back to making commercials. It was a big waste of time. I began to think the only chance was to get an enlightened sponsor. I had hopes that it would come from a govern­ ment set-up, as it had done in other countries. Canada being the classic, and the Crown Film Unit in Britain.

Did the war provide a stimulus to the making of documentaries?

It definitely helped. A small group of us were able to get close to the politicians through the Govern­ ment Documentary Films Com­ mittee in 1940, then the Prime

Minister’s Propaganda Committee in 1942, and later through Coombs and his Post-war Reconstruction Dept.

When the Film Board was set up we asked for two things: money for production and money for dis­ tribution. They gave us only the money for production. Distribution John Grierson had already come was, and still is, the key to it, but to Australia. Did he create an in­ nobody will touch it. You know terest in documentary? you’ve got this present flash-in-thepan, and a lot of activity, but there The dear man tried to, but he is no basis to it,- no stability. Of didn’t get anywhere. He got a very course, it is good to have a school poor reception. He was very bitter and it is good to have a law saying when he left, and made his famous that commercials must be made remark as he stepped into the plane here. But I spoke strongly against to return to London: “ I always said the commercials legislation. Too this would happen if you exposed many people in the industry said: cockneys to the sun” , or words to “We are getting a start. We are in that effect. the business” . This just hoodwinks the main issue. Some people will Was he trying to set up a Govern­ get experience, but what a hard and ment Film Board? wasteful way to get it.

He was trying to establish a basis of worthwhile filmmaking in the social sense.

Did you have much to do with him?

As much as I possibly could. He was mainly tied up in Canberra try­ ing to get the politicians to do something. If it hadn’t been for him there perhaps wouldn’t have been any Documentary Films Com­ mittee. But his total effect was real­ ly very small. It was men such as Alan Stout, John Metcalfe, and D.W.K. Duncan, men in top social and academic positions and who had the respect of the political people, who really laid the basis — as key members of the Government Documentary Film Council.

Wasn’t there a move at that time to give films the same status as books in the library service?

When you went to Shell in 1948, was that move prompted by the dis­ tribution problems in the Film Board?

It was one of the reasons. There were other reasons. We had our own distribution at Shell. We had projectors and vans in each State, and libraries. Back of Beyond was seen by a million people in a year and a half. In Sydney, the queue went half way around Wynyard Sq. to the Shell House cinema. It was incredible. We had hoped this would happen with the Film Board.

Small theatrettes everywhere, but they didn’t start one, not one. They just didn’t see the message.

Television, of course, has chang­ ed everything. There should be a much closer link-up, in my view, between the ABC and Film Australia.

Providing daytime programming?

On location for John Heyer’s The Valley Is Ours. Malcolm Otten (left), Reg Pierce and John Heyer.

Above left: John Heyer editing his Native Earth at the original Supreme Sound Sydney System (now Supreme Films). 1946.

John Heyer recording a scene for Zane Grey’s White Death on Hayman Island. 1936.

Shooting Back of Beyond. Director John Heyer and cameraman Ross Wood with the Arab camel driver.

Cinema Papers, September— 121

JOHN HEYER

Mrs Watson, her baby, and Chinese servant, Ah Sam, escape from Lizard Island after be­ ing attacked by Aboriginals. 1881. The Reef.

Providing program material of all kinds. Also television should be much more specialized. There should be a series of programs for stamp collectors, even if there are only four of them . One for architects and so on. They have this ridiculous equation: Mass = Quality. Look at the television that is pouring out, it is quite appalling.

1 remember watching in Britain a program for gynaecologists. The air had been made available for a particular meeting. It was wonder­ ful for a layman to watch. I under­ stood only one per cent of what was going on, but it gave viewers a basic perspective on the doctors and their specialty. It was an interesting and important part of a layman’s social education as it were, an important spin-off.

impression. Geoffrey was with Film Centre, London, which consisted mainly of Stuart Legg and Arthur Elton. They were film consultants and managed to convince Shell London that it would be a good idea if one of them went to Australia. Shell London got Shell Australia to invite Geoffrey out and while he was here he made Alice.

Shell Australia soon learnt they had the benefit of having a good film unit for their ordinary work­ day films as well, whether it was how to lubricate a car, or a Shell ad.

Well the ABC is going in the other direction, so there is not much hope there . . .

Oh yes, that is a minor price to pay. Much better than working in a studio on rubbish. It was enlighten­ ed patronage in a way, but it was more than that. I remember Luxton (chairman, Shell Australia) — he was a very intelligent man — saying it wasn’t charity and it wouldn’t have been a good thing if it was.

The discipline didn’t do us any harm and you soon weed out the men from the boys. The big shot wants to make the great epic, but the film lovers will do anything, particularly if it leads somewhere.

This was a big weakness in the early government film set-up. If we put someone on we were stuck with them. At Shell, if they proved no good we fired them next week.

Continued on P.190

It is all very easy to snipe on the side, but it’s very difficult unless y o u ’ve g ot an e n lig h te n e d government.

At Shell you had complete freedom to choose the subjects and how you would treat them. Was that the first time it had happened in Australia?

Xavier Herbert (left) and John Heyer. Heyer is planning a feature based on Herbert’s Capricornia.

JOHN HEYER FILMOGRAPHY 1939 2000 Below (30 mins) Script and direc­ tion Silver Soil (20 mins) Script and direction 1940 It Wasn’t Luck (10 mins) Script and direction New Pastures (20 mins) Script and direction 1943 Jungle Conquest (20 mins) Script and direction 1944 The Overlanders Director of 2nd Unit 1945 Native Earth (20 mins) Director 1946 Journey of a Nation (15 mins) Director Turn of the Soil (30 mins) Director Born in the Sun (30 mins) Director 1947 Men and Mobs (30 mins) Director The Canecutters (12 mins) Producer 1948 The Valley is Ours (45 mins) Director 1950 Rankin’s Springs is West (30 mins) Producer Let’s Go (10 mins) Director 1951 The Dealer Plan (30 mins) Director On the Stream (15 mins) Director 1952 Playing with Water (30 mins) Director 1954 Back of Beyond (66 mins) Director 1955 The Forerunner (35 mins) Director 1957 Forming of Metals (28 mins) Executive producer Broken Rhythm (1 min) Producer Car Race (1 min) Producer 1958 Man’s Head (1 min) Director Dream Sound (2 mins) Producer Rescue (1 min) Producer Fussy Man (1 min) Producer Posterman (1 min) Producer Rough Running (1 min) Producer Best Seller (1 min) Producer 1958 Coupe des Alpes (36 mins) Executive producer 1959 The Paying Bay (10 mins) Producer The Professor (1 min) Producer Follow that Car (10 mins) Producer Pixilated (1 min) Producer Orchestra (1 min) Producer Edna (1 min) Producer Calloope (1 min) Producer Newspaper (1 min) Producer Tough on a Two Stroke (26 mins) Ex­

122—Cinema Papers, September

ecutive producer 1960 Duel (2 mins) Director Jack (1 min) Director Chameleon (1 min) Director Europe Bridge (5 min) Producer Graph (1 min) Producer City Ride (1 min) Producer Waltz (1 min) Producer The LPG Flame (17 mins) Executive producer 1961 Hands (1 min) Producer Local Image (1 min) Producer Security (1 min) Producer Temperature (1 min) Producer Shellmen (1 min) Producer Kerosene (23 mins) Executive producer Home Heating (19 mins) Executive producer 1962 Tumut Pond (10 mins) Director The Waste Land (30 mins) Director Shell Spirit (2 mins) Producer Boot (1 min) Producer The Cure (1 min) Producer The Traveller (1 min) Producer The Wall (1 min) Producer Shell Service (1 min) Producer 1963 Like New (1 min) Producer Faces (1 min) Producer The Band (1 min) Producer How the Motor Car Works (30 mins) Ex­ ecutive producer Quality Control (36 mins) Executive producer Round the Ring (11 mins) Executive producer 1964 This Is It (television live special) Producer Servishell (19 mins) Producer Tick Tock Murder (1 min) Producer The Kerosene Flame (21 mins) Producer Aviation Research Report (24 mins) Ex­ ecutive producer Years of Adventure (36 mins) Executive producer 1965 TMO 135 (20 mins) Producer Volta Dam (5 mins) Producer Shellpower (1 min) Producer Shellarama (10 mins) Producer A History of Motor Racing (series) Ex­ ecutive producer The Heroic Days (33 mins) The Golden Age (37 mins)

Oh no, Geoffrey Bell had been here and had softened Shell very successfully with a film called Alice Through The Centre, which was a jolly good effort and made a big The Titans (29 mins) Racing Reborn (27 mins) The Champions (28 mins) 1966 Race Day (10 mins) Producer Valponna (1 min) Producer Kuala Lumpur Airport (21 mins)

Producer The Sleeper (1 min) Producer 1967 Visible Manifestations (20

mins)

Producer

Deep Space (5 mins) Producer 1969 The Infinite Pacific (57 mins) Producer 1971 The South Seas (27 mins) Producer/-

director. v 1972 Timeless Land. Produced treatment for the ABC of 15 one-hour episodes.

1973 Wrote a treatment with Michael Noonan for a feature film based on Xavier Herbert’s novel, Capricornia.

1976 The Reef (80 mins) Producer/director

AWARDS 1948-1967 Produced and Directed:

Native Earth — 20 min.

Diploma, Edinburgh, '48.

The Valley Is Ours — 45 min.

Diploma, Edinburgh, ’49.

“One of the most significant (of 12) Films of the Year", UNESCO, ’49.

Playing With Water — 30 min.

Grand Prix, Cortina, ’57.

The Back of Beyond — 66 min.

Grand PriXj Venice, ’54.

1st Prize, Montevideo, '56.

Diploma, Edinburgh, '54.

Diploma, Cape Town, ’55.

Diploma, Johannesburg, ’56.

The Forerunner — 35 min.

Special Award, Venice, ’58.

“An outstanding Film of the Year", London, '58.

Citation, Padua, ’58.

1st Prize, Melbourne, ’58.

Man’s Head — 1 min.

1st Prize, Venice, ’58. .

In 1958 Britain won the Coupe de Venezia, the overall Festival Prize with six films, four of which were produced by John Heyer: Dream Sound, Fussy Man, Posterman, Rough Run­ ning. It was the first time Britain had ever

received this award.

Did you work on them as well?

Oh yes.

You did everything?

Duel — 2 min.

1st Prize, Venice, ’60.

Tumut Pond — 10 min. “ An outstanding Film of the Year", London, '62.

Jack — 1 min.

Diploma, Venice, ’60.

Chameleon — 1 min.

Diploma, Venice, '60.

The Cane Cutters (12 min) Diploma, Edinburgh, ’49.

Dream Sound — 2 min.

Diploma, Venice, '58.

The Professor — 1 min.

Diploma, Venice, ’59.

The Paying Bay — 10 min.

2nd Prize, Turin, '61.

Hands — 1 min.

2nd Prize, Trieste, ’61.

Shell Spirit — 2 min.

Gold Award, London, '63.

Boot — 1 min.

Silver Award, London, ’64.

Like New — 1 min.

Diploma, Cannes, '63.

Servishell — 19 min.

Diploma, London, '64.

TMO 135 — 20 min.

Diploma, London, '65.

The Sleeper — 1 min.

Diploma, Cannes, ’67.

Executive Producer: Forming of Metals — 28 min.

Grand Prix, Brussels, '58.

Grand Prix, Budapest, ’59.

1st Prize, Vancouver, '60.

Coupe Des Alpes — 36 min.

1st Prize, Cortina, ’59.

Diploma, Vancouver, ’59.

Diploma, Harrogate, ’59.

How The Motor Car Works — 30 min.

Diploma, Venice, '64.

Aviation Research Report — 24 min.

Diploma, Cannes, '65, A History of Motor Racing (Series) Golden Oscar, Rouen, ’64.

The Heroic Days — 33 min.

1st Prize, Vancouver, ’62.

The Golden Age — 37 min.

1st Prize, Cortina, '62.

The Titans —29 min.

1st Prize, Cortina, '63.

The Green Pine Tree Ridge

Patricia Edgar While Western sociologists continue to dis­ agree about the effects of film and television, and our educators assign them to the periphery of their consciousness, regarding them as irrele­ vant to education, the Chinese acknowledge their potential and actual impact and utilize them as a potent political resource. Film and television are taken very seriously in China.

To own a television set in China is a luxury.

Two hundred and fifty yuan (AS103) will buy a small color set, but that cost equals six months wages for the average worker. We did see set's in the apartments of factory workers, however, and their owners confessed to being regular viewers.

In Peking, there are two channels which screen news events, documentaries, operas, and films.

The night I spent watching, story tellers from different provinces told their political tales of the class struggle in very entertaining style to their viewers. Films, on the other hand, are seen throughout China. ^ From 1966, peasants increasingly produced and put on their own lantern-slide shows. Chao Chi-chun, the deputy secretary of the Com­ munist Party committee of Changhi county, Hopei province, who was in charge of cultural and educational work there, reported1 that amateur lantern-slide groups had grown from only one (in his province) at the beginning of 1965, to 453 by mid-1966. The activities of the lantern-slide groups were closely geared to the needs of the peasants in their political life, in growing crops and in scientific agricultural ex­ * Patricia Edgar visited China from May 10-28, 1976, with a party of 24 educators. They visited schools, universities, factories, cultural events, historic sites, a commune, hospitals, an art school and a film studio.

1. Chao Chi-chun, “ Peasants Put on Their Own Lanternslide Shows”, China Reconstructs, August 1966, p. 66.

perimentation. The slides dealt with inter­ national events, local news, agricultural science techniques, health and hygiene. They were shown with running commentaries interspersed with folk songs and other popular local melodies.

It wasn’t until 1968 that China was able to produce colour motion picture films of sufficient quality and in quantities that would make her self-sufficient. China’s workers in the chemical industry were given the incentive to go into film stock production when other governments refus­ ed to sell stock to China and communist leaders wanted to use film to spread Mao Tse-tung’s thoughts through the country.

Last year, 10 billion viewers saw a film; that is every man, woman and child in China saw at least 12 screenings each. Getting films to the people has been one of the objectives of the great Cultural Revolution. Today, 11,300 prints are made of each film produced: 300 in 35 mm, 3000 in 16 mm, and 8000 in 8.75 mm.

Film distribution through the National Film Corporation and film showings are now so well organized that films reach every village in China. Projectionists with mobile units make the rounds of the villages. Stories are told*12 of the tireless efforts of projection teams in getting films to remote areas — climbing hills, con­ fronting blizzards and crossing flooded rivers.

Film has become an important vehicle for political communication.

The fundamental task of all China’s cultural products, including art, literature, opera, dance, film and television, is to create images of worker, peasant and soldier heroes, and to reflect the belief that the Chinese Communist Party is the force leading the people’s cause forward and that the working class is the 2. “ M obile Film Projection Team Serves Mountain People”, Peking Review, March 19, 1971, pp. 28-9.

vanguard of the revolution. Back in January 1944, Mao Tse-tung said after seeing a perfor­ mance of the opera Driven to Join the Liangshan Mountain Rebels: “ Having seen your performance, I wish to express my thanks to you for the excellent work you have done. Please convey my thanks to the comrades of the cast! History is made by the people, yet the old opera (and all the old literature and art, which are divorced from the people) presents the people as though they were dirt, and the stage is dominated by lords and ladies and their pampered sons and daughters. Now you have reversed this reversal of history and restored historical truth, and thus a new life is opening up for the old opera. That is why this merits congratulations. The initiative you have taken marks an epoch-making beginning in the revolutionization of the old opera. I am very happy at the thought of this. I hope you will write more plays and give more perfor­ mances, and so help make this practice a common one which will prevail throughout the country.”3 Mao considered that serious attention should be given to discussion and criticism of reac­ tionary Films. In 1951 he personally led the at­ tack on the cultural and ideological fronts with his criticism of The Life of Wu Hsun. Wu Hsun, a landlord, was portrayed in the film as a “great man” willing to sacrifice himself to provide poor peasant children with a chance to study. Mao said of the film: “The questions raised by The Life of Wu Hsun are fundamental in character. Living in the era of the Chinese people’s great struggle against foreign aggressors and the domestic reactionary feudal rulers towards the end of the Ching dynasty, people like Wu Hsun did 3. China Reconstructs, August 1967, p. 20.

Cinema Papers, September— 123

Guerrilla on the Plain

not lift a finger to disturb the tiniest fragment of the feudal economic base or its super­ structure. On the contrary, they worked fanatically to spread feudal culture and, moreover, sedulously fawned upon the reac­ tionary feudal rulers in order to acquire the status they themselves lacked for spreading feudal culture. Ought we to praise such vile conduct? Can we ever tolerate such vile con­ duct being publicly praised, especially when such praise flaunts the revolutionary flag of ‘ serving the people ’ and the failure of the revolutionary peasant struggle is used to heighten the contrast? To approve or tolerate such praise means to approve or tolerate reac­ tionary propaganda vilifying the revolu­ tionary struggle of the peasants, the history of China and the Chinese nation, and to regard such propaganda as justified.

“The appearance of the film The Life of Wu Hsun, and particularly the praise lavished on Wu Hsun and the film, show the degree of ideological confusion reached in our country’s cultural circles. “ In the view of many writers, history develops not by the replacement of the old by the new, but by the exertion of every effort to preserve the old from extinction, not by class struggle to overthrow the reactionary feudal rulers who had to be overthrown, but by the negation of the class struggle of the oppressed and their submission to these rulers, in the manner of Wu Hsun. Our writers have not studied history to ascertain who were the enemies oppressing the Chinese people, and whether there is anything praiseworthy in those who submitted to these enemies and served them. Moreover, they have not tried to find out what new forms of social economy, new class forces, new personalities and ideas have appeared in China and struggled against thè old forms of social economy and their superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) in the century and more since the Opium War of 1840, and they have accordingly failed to determine what is to be commended and praised, what is not to be commended and praised, and what is to be condemned.”4 4, Ibid, pp. 20-21.

124—Cinema Papers, September

people in the commune and is attempting to restore capitalism. He opposes the new ideas and is especially opposed to the young people who are encouraged by the Party Committee to rid the commune of all the bad elements. The class enemy hands over to the young people the whip he uses to drive the horse cart, but they are un­ able to control the horses. An older man helps the young men to mature and entrusts them to drive the cart. In the end, the revisionist enemy is exposed and the young people prevail.

Another film, The Guerilla on the Plain, originally made in the 1950s, was remade in 1975. The film is about the Japanese occupation of rural China and the newer version stresses the struggle against the Japanese. The hero, the leader of the guerillas, disguises himself in many ways and leads surprise attacks on the Japanese aggressors who fear him. The Japanese are so afraid that once they hear his name they fear he is just near them, or that he could appear any time. The earlier version of the film showed the peasants in too passive a role to satisfy the revolutionary cause.

Most films today are based on modern ideas and are not recreated old stories. There are still a.few films made in black and white, but most are now in colour. Feature film production has geared up again after a period when the directors and cameramen took time off to study Chairman Mao’s thoughts and criticize films.

The major film studios are in Peking, Shanghai and Changchun. We visited the largest Another film attacked by Mao was Inside studio, which is in Changchun. The studio was Story of the Ching Court, which in 1950 was still set up by the Japanese in 1939 and used by them being widely shown in Peking, Shanghai and for cultural aggression. It was taken over in a other cities. The debate about this film was the seriously damaged condition from the Kuomin­ first major cultural struggle between Mao’s tang in 1946 to be repaired and enlarged into a views and those of a number of top Party per­ comprehensive studio which now produces sonnel who viewed the film as patriotic and features, docum entaries, scientific and progressive and refused to criticize and educational films. The studio has its own film repudiate it. processing laboratory with 10 machines process­ Inside Story of the Ching Court was regarded ing 1200 metres of film an hour. It takes 24

by Mao as promoting fear of imperialist aggres­ hours for 20 copies of a feature film to be made sion and bourgeois reformism by advocating in the laboratory. This year, eight feature films constitutional reform and modernization if will be made in Changchun. .

China was to become rich and strong. However, All films are shot in 35mm and reduced to it was not until the Cultural Revolution in 1966 16mm and 8.75mm. The shooting ratio is usual­ that Mao succeeded in having this film widely ly 1 to 3.5. A feature takes about four months to and publicly criticized.5 produce and the budgets range from 400,000 By 1967, Mao’s line had prevailed and there yuan (A$ 164,600) for a black and white feature, was a ‘festival’ of bad reactionary films shown to and 500-600,000 yuan for one in colour. Since mass audiences in several cities and subjected to 1946, 200 films have been made at Changchun mass criticism. Most of the films shown had and 400 films from other countries have been been released after 1949. Workers, peasants and dubbed there. The studio includes a sound soldiers, Red Guards and others of the masses studio, a large property room and space for the were invited to send their criticisms to the press construction and setting up of several sets. after seeing the films. The result was that the A staff of 1900 people work at the studio in­ films were unanimously denounced. The cam­ cluding 20 directors and 20 editors. Scripts are paign of criticism was regarded as “an impor­ solicited from “the people”, and at the start of tant part of the mass campaign to criticise and each year the annual production schedule is sent repudiate the top capitalist-roader in the Party to the Ministry of Culture for approval. The and an important part of the deep-going struggle director, editor and cameraman work strictly to between the two lines — the proletarian revolu­ a prepared script. tionary line and the counter-revolutionary Actors and actresses are selected according to revisionist line — on the literary and art front” .6 the needs of the part and are not paid any more Since then every effort has been made in the than anyone else. Although the star system is not films produced to see that “the orientation is encouraged, it was apparent that particular ac­ correct, the revolutionization successful and the tors and actresses in films and opera were es­ artistic quality good” (Chairman Mao 1964). pecially popular with audiences. The actors are Revisionist films were discarded or remade us­ very much aware of the role they play in serving ing the “correct” line. Green Pine Ridge, the Party. An account by Li Hsiu-ming of her originally made in 1966, was remade in 1972-73 performance as the barefoot doctor in the recent in colour. It is the story of the class struggle in a film Spring Sprout,7indicates her pride in the rural people’s commune. There is a strange dead heroic character she portrayed. She concluded, tree near the village which frightens the horses “ I have learned that to portray workers, when they pass. Only one horse driver can con­ peasants and soldiers well and to create artistic trol the horses, but he is a class enemy of the images that they love, an actor must plunge into the heat of struggle and get to know and love the workers, peasants and soldiers” .8

5. Chi Pen-yu, “ Patriotism or National Betrayal? — On the Reactionary Film Inside Story o f the Ching Court” , China Reconstructs, May 1967, pp. 1-12.'

6. “ Reactionary Films Criticised” , Peking Review , September 1, 1967, p. 18.

7. Li Hsiu-ming, “Acting a Barefoot Doctor on the Screen” , China Reconstructs, June 1976, pp. 39-40.

8. Ibid, p. 40.

We saw two feature films while in China, Spr­ ing Sprout and Breaking With Old Ideas. As films they had a few technical problems, mainly related to sound and dubbing, and there were lapses in continuity that a Western audience would notice, but they were stirring films for the Chinese audiences.

Breaking With New Ideas is a film about the proletarian revolution in education. The film creates the heroic image of Lung Kuo-cheng who dares to break with the revisionist line. The film is based on the Kiangsi Communist Labour University, a new socialist school which emerged in 1958 during the Big Leap Forward and the revolution in education, which trained students to be educated labourers with socialist con­ sciousness. The film presents the conflict between revisionism and Mao’s revolutionary line. The ‘bad guy’, the capitalist-roader in the Party, is beaten in the battle by the ‘good guys’, the worker peasants, who at the end of the film cheer with tears in their eyes and cry out “ Long Live Chairman Mao” .

Spring Sprout is the first feature film depicting the events of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The film is primarily about a young peasant woman who becomes a barefoot doctor as a result of involvement in the struggle in her village between the two classes and two lines in medicine. She proves fearless in her bat­ tle against the capitalist-roaders inside the Par­ ty. The screenplay is by three young writers who were activists during the Cultural Revolution.

They stress the heroine’s fighting spirit while at the same time making her highly politically aware.

Both films stress the issues of the present debate in China — revisionism versus Mao’s revolutionary line. They attempt to inspire the people with militant spirit and to repudiate the views of revisionism. The extent of revisionist support within the Party is an unknown fact, but the Vice-Prime Minister, Teng Hsiao-ping, before his downfall, walked out of a private screening of Spring Sprout openly rejecting the position the film so clearly promotes.

It is no doubt because of the single use of film for propaganda and teaching purposes that the Chinese felt so outraged and betrayed by An­ tonioni’s film China, which they described as “vicious”, “despicable” , “deadly venom to the core” .9 Antonioni chose to ignore the new spirit, friendliness and enthusiasm of many of the Chinese people, the new face of China and the accomplishments of the Chinese revolution. But his film is probably less of an attempt to under­ mine China than the Chinese believed.

Regardless of whatever Antonioni’s motives were, he. has succeeded in achieving a complete ban on the use of 16mm film equipment by foreigners in China. There were around 20 applications through the Australian embassy last year for permission to film, from sporting groups and others including Film Australia, but all requests were politely refused.

China is still a closed society for most Australians. At present we are not able to see China’s films of China, or foreigner’s films of China. Without them we have a more difficult task in attempting to understand the complex­ ities of the philosophy that guides a quarter of the world’s population. But even the visitor who stays briefly, learns that the media and the arts in China are being used as a potent educational force for a national purpose. In Australia we still argue about whether the media has effects at all and those who control them are the firs.t to say they don’t. Have we completely wasted our media resources, or are their functions just better disguised? ★ 9. “ Renmin Ribao” , (People’s Daily) Commentator, “ A VicipuSpj Motive,^, Despicable Tricks — A criticism of M. Antonioni’s anti-China film China ” , China Reconstructs, April 1974, pp. 2-5.

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Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele H iiet

THE POLITICS OF FILM PRACTICE “I think that more and more the work we’ve got to do — though I have some reservations — is to make films which radically eliminate art, so that there is no equivocation. This may lose us some people, but it is essential to eliminate all the ar­ tistic, filmic surface to bring people face to face with the ideas in their natural state.”

— Jean-Marie Straub, in interview with Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, ‘Enthusiasm’, No. 1 Since the events of Paris in May, 1968, the question of the ideological function of film has been the cutting edge of a number of politically radical movements in film theory. Cahiers du Cinema led the way, with a brief succession of editorial manifestos in October, 1969, declaring the need for film studies to take scrupulous ac­ count of the total political, economic and ideological structure — superstructure, if you will — in which a film is produced, distributed and consumed.

This was considered logically necessary, if there was to be a valid science of the semantics of film, because the means of production of a film clearly limits much of the intended meaning a film can have. And it was considered prac­ tically necessary, if the permanent revolution declared in 1968 was to stay in motion, since the conscious (and subconscious) ideological inten­ tions of the ruling class are constantly to be detected in the minute flaws and ‘sutures’ in the otherwise seamless fabric of the ‘imaginary’ reality, that is substituted for lived experience, in every cultural artefact, from bus timetables to feature films.

In Cahiers'' terms, the camera is unable not to record “the vague, unformulated, untheorized, unthought-out world” of the dominant ideology; therefore, “the question we have to ask is: ‘Which films . . . allow the ideology a free, un­ hampered passage, transmit it with crystal clarity, serve as its chosen language? And which attempt to make it turn back and reflect itself, intercept it and make it visible by revealing its mechanisms, by blocking them’.” One could paraphrase the motto of a familiar Australian cultural artefact; the price of freedom from Opposite: the interviewer of the banker from History Lessons.

ideological complicity is eternal vigilance.

Cahiers' ideologically-aware approach to film analysis converged with a number of heavy­ weight French intellectual movements of the 1950s and 1960s — structuralist and semiotic lin g u istic s, L acan ian an aly sis' of the (linguistically-founded) subconscious, and Althusserian Marxism. Unfortunately, the offspring, in film studies, of all this intellectual promiscuity has mainly proved, like the ass, to be infertile.

For a start, the way back, from talk of the necessity of Althusserian-Lacanian-semiotic ‘textual analysis’ of films, to the films themselves, seems almost non-existent. And the internal coherence of the model (models) being invoked is a matter that can be decided only after an arduous apprenticeship in the relevant French intellectual traditions, and a pain­ staking acquisition of the vocabulary and gram­ mar peculiar to semiotic discourse. Few com­ plete the curriculum, and many decide at the outset not to enrol. But the chief irony is that what was launched as an effort to remove the blight of cultural mystification thrust upon ‘art’ by the bourgeoisie, and to systematically tear down the intricate sub-conscious apparatuses that constantly evolve to obscure lived reality from the consumers of cultural products, has worked its way into such tight, obscure, and in­ tellectually elite, corners, far from political usability. And, truly, it is necessary to write sentences like that to invoke the semiotic stance in film theory.

So, where does the politics of film practice of Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet enter into this current tendency in film theory? My reason for briefly describing it is to make the point that they do not, that the theory implicit in their work is a far more fluid, graceful, and prac­ ticable set of imperatives, calling for a different kind of use of the intellect. This was very evident when they talked to the Northwestern Universi­ ty Cine Club, in Chicago, September, 1975, and in conversations recorded in other situations.* * Cahiers du Cinema, Enthusiasm No. 1.

(Nos.

207, 212, 223), and

Above: Pouring the wine into the soil in Moses and Aaron.

Susan Dermody

If your were forced to search for a name, a tradition, for the Straubs’ politics of film prac­ tice, it might be Brecht. But only recently, only in specific films, and really not at all, without further lists of qualifications. Probably the most Brechtian thing about the Straubs is that, as for Brecht, the mental work involved in the making and perceiving of their work is sufficiently fine, distinct and intense to be its own tradition.

Richard Roud has emphasized that Straub is, like Brecht, that rarest of creatures, a politicallyradical formalist. And that this formalism is strongly classicist, in temperament, is suggested by the source material of the films—Bach, Schoenberg, Corneille, Heinrich Boll, Brecht.

Yet, while it is easy to sense the gulf between the Straubs and academic film theory of the re­ cent past, it is harder to go on to characterize their theory of political film praxis. For a start, the fundamental point of discussion with the Straubs is that it is impossible to separate the political from the aesthetic convictions in works that are literally at work, and not at play, in the medium. The political ideas have an intellectual beauty, and the aesthetic ideas have a political force. But this “ political aesthetic” is neither programmatic in any sense, nor accessible to any qf the usual terminologies, political or aesthetic.

And instead of the “significance” of the political ideas being rendered by the manipulation of the aesthetic means of filmmaking, the “political aesthetic” of the Straubs’ films is matter to be sensed by the intellect, and comprehended by the senses. The only analogy I can think of is the in­ tellectual sensuousness of Cezanne’s paintings — which are also political in the sense that Straub’s least overtly political film is political, the Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach. (Straub offered it as “ my contribution to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against the Americans” .)

It is political in that such a perfected and ex­ hilarating sense of things in their proper place and moment must also, in the political sphere {if the political sphere can be considered separately), discover the justice of a situation with equal impeccability. In Chicago, the Straubs wanted to visit just two things — the Cinema Papers, September— 127

STRAUB/HUILLET

The Bridegroom, The Comedienne and The Pimp.

Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach. Straub: “ My contribu­ tion to the struggle of the Vietnamese people against the Americans.”

ghettoes of the South Side, and every Cezanne in “ proper” and “ acceptable” have both political and aesthetic meaning here.) In fact what the Art Institute.

Already it is plainly difficult for me to try to appears to be a continual stylistic shift in the characterize their work except in words that work is the outcome of fixed principles of the sound like excessive praise — but the fact keeps Straubs’ political aesthetic — for example, the intruding that the Straubs’ films are made as stand against cinematic language. perfectly as they can be. Probably the only way to deal satisfactorily, in an age of scepticism, ON CINEMATIC LANGUAGE with a kind of perfection is to offer evidence of the coherence of the “ political aesthetic” that is “ We try to fight against cinematic the mainspring of the eight Straub films to date, language. (Could there be a cinematic and to leave the sense of the (metaphysical) language that is not the language of grace of these works as an article of faith.

Hollywood, and that might be politically This part should be prefaced by saying that acceptable?) If cinematic language is not the Daniele Huillet is as much implicated in the language of Hollywood, it is the language of following quotations as (her husband) Jean­ the ruling class. You have to choose. All the Marie Straub. Their communications in con­ history of the cinema is a zig-zag between two versation are as much a joint project as their kinds. On one side, the kind represented by communications in film. Daniele frequently Dziga Vertov, or the early Griffith, or, on the translates Jean-Marie’s French or German other hand, the kind represented by the last Eisenstein films, and by Hollywood. You can responses to questions, sometimes corrects a try to accept this zig-zag, and to work with it, slight exaggeration, often takes up where he leaves off. Consequently, I have made no but even that is a choice. attempt to distinguish whether the “speaker” is “ I’m trying to make films that have no Jean-Marie, Daniele, or Jean-Marie via Daniele; language, and when I sense that there is a in no instance did the distinction seem very im­ cinematographic language, I try to destroy it portant. Credits to the actual films generally in­ before it is born. I’m trying to eliminate all volve a joint (‘Straub-Huillet’) production com­ the obstacles between the spectator and what I’m showing or reality, or between me and pany; in the last four projects, both Jean--Marie reality. Language in this way would be an ob­ and Daniele have been cited for director, editor, stacle . . . If in 50 years someone sees one of script; in all but one film (Machorka-IYluff), today’s films that is considered profoundly Daniele has been production manager; and in ‘filmic’, he will not be able to understand every project, Daniele’s ability to raise money (where none exists) and to draw up a budget in a anything, because for him it will be a bad way that makes the money amount to something rhetorical dream, he will no longer see usable has been crucial in the realization of the anything but rhetoric, or ‘language’, or ‘art’, films. It should also be noted that the Straubs or the ‘filmic’ aspect, and that is what I’m try­ are always, and without exception, sole editors ing to avoid.” of their films. The timing, rhythm and conscious Straub said of Not Reconciled, for example, a structuring that are so frequently acclaimed in film whose ‘narrative’ spans nearly 50 years of their work are, in fact, “all their own work” . German history with (at first) extraordinary The outstanding feature of the work as a cor­ ellipses of time and none of the usual cues of an pus is that the Straubs come to each film as if in­ elapse of time: ^ ■ venting cinema anew. But the constant of the . “This film, in front of commercial movies, work is the sense that each film is formed by represents a kind of strike.” powerful notions of what constitutes proper and -• The nature of this “ stride” against the codes, acceptable film practice. (And, naturally, • usages, expectations and illusions of.the cinema 128—Cinema Papers, September

Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub.

will become more clear. An important part of it is Straub’s insistence on the use of live syn­ chronous sound.

ON LIVE SYNCHRONOUS SOUND

(“What does recording live synchronous sound mean to you?”) “ Well . . . to have surprises. To have sur­ prises and to discover a reality. To experi­ ment with combinations that are a great deal richer than those one might be able to find oneself, with one’s petty intentions. It means giving myself the possibility of managing to construct an object that is much more aleatory than the one that might be made without live sound.”

He gives examples: from the Filming of Not Reconciled — the character Nettlinger, discuss­ ing the anti-Nazi character, Trischler, says that he was interrogated, and at that moment outside the restaurant where Straub was Filming, a police loudspeaker entered the soundtrack momentarily, fortuitously; in Othon — the noise of a motor cycle starting up subtly underlines the sense of the words of Galba. “ Had one had the idea of adding the same motor cycle while dubbing the Film shot silently, I maintain that this motor cycle would not have taken on sense, but signification. And since Othon is in live sound, this motor cycle remains something richer than signification.”

He goes on to emphasize that live sound refuses to falsify reality — even in terms of the pro­ filmic reality, the wind in the microphone if it eludes the control of the sound man, the tougher, more concrete, working conditions for the ac­ tors, which helps them be, “ more concrete, truer . . .” , and the audience is permitted to hear and to see these realities.

Live sound entails enormous responsibilities to every reality heard, as well as seen, in the space included and implied by the camera.

“Off-camera space exists. That’s another thing one discovers when one shoots with live sound. Filmmakers who shoot silently can’t Opposite: the banker from History Lessons.

STRA U B/H UILLET

Chronicle of Anna Magdalene Bach.

be aware of it. And they are making a big mistake there, because they are going against the essence of the cinema . . . that is, something that photographs in two dimen­ sions a three-dimensional reality . . . It’s sound that gives space. So that someone who shoots silently can forget that he’s shooting space.”

He cites an example of his inability to dismiss lightly any of the record that a sound take represents. A take shot silently can be set up very differently to one shot live. A character can approach from any distance, but the shot can be taken from just that moment the character enters the field of vision.

“Whereas if you hear him coming, you can’t simply cut his steps at any point whatsoever, you can’t simply toss them into the wastebasket like that.”

Similarly, the receding sound of a character who has left the field of vision is profoundly impor­ tant. Many people have commented on the ex­ treme beauty of the rhythm in the cutting of a Straub film; yet Straub insists, in his insistence on live sound, that the ‘reality’ of the shot deter­ mines this beautiful element of rhythm, as well as the existence of “empty scenes” after a door has closed, or a wall has been left empty where a character had been.

“Now it’s quite clear that these elements of rhythm take on not a “signification” but a “sense” . There is a blank in Not Reconciled at the moment where the old woman is embrac­ ing her son and she says, “ Forgive me, I couldn’t save the lamb” ; we cut there on the white door, and one sees nothing, and one hears it opening. And I intended to cut that in the editing, but I couldn’t cut it because it had a certain sense. After she speaks . . . you hear the noise of the latch, and you see that white surface, and then you see only Robert, her son,who comes into view six feet further down the hall, having passed through the door.

There, it has a sense. A white surface, the sound of a firearm after a phrase, fine. If you see characters who leave a scene, living, and if you make them leave, living, and then you see the ruins when they have left, it’s obvious that that has a sense . . .”

This intense respect for the reality of a take is bound up with Straub’s sense that film is about the condensation of time, the crystallization of the threat that is in every moment, and that can be ‘suprised’ by the filmmaker whose ears and eyes are opened to it, and who permits himself to find the rhythm of the shot (the edited take) only in terms of discoverable sense, and not compos­ ed signification. “ . . . it’s the pure present condensed. What passes, and what never happens again, and what is there, what the viewer feels as conden­ sation. That is to say, he feels. One could say 130—Cinema Papers, September

that this fact of showing death at work should give people a taste for living, because they must realize that every moment that passes, it’s done with, and they can never recuperate it. There must be a threat in it. Because if they don’t realize that, they’re not living.”

For Straub, the ‘idea’ of a space recorded on film is far from just the significance intended by the script. “ Everything — the insect suffering in one cor­ ner, or the wind coming through the frame or the space itself, or a changing light — everything is as important as the human being you are framing.”

And, “ If a film doesn’t open the eyes and ears of people, of what good is it? It’s better to give it up . . . The only thing one can do with film is give information and open ears. That’s a lot; but if one does the opposite, it’s better to change your profession, and go fishing, or learn grammar . . . ” The one instance in which Straub was persuaded it would be cheaper to dub sound is the street se­ quence in his first film, Machorka-Muff. Not only did he find the experience of post-synchipg “meaningless” , and intensely “boring” , his respect for detail caused amused comment.

“At that time they also wrote in Der Spiegel that I would go into film history because I had gone to Bonn to record the tramways, and they should be the same in Munich or anywhere. But that isn’t true, the sound is very different. First they aren’t the same kind of cars and carriages, and the sound on a cor­ ner in Bonn is not the same as on a corner in Munich. (“This is the usual opinion that the sound is just an illustration of the picture.

Something a man makes in the backroom with two pieces of tin.”) Exactly. Because they don’t believe in film . . . and so in cinematography, the ‘matter’ —•the matter as in the pictures by Cezanne, which is so laid-on — they deny this simply because they don’t know that it is a complex of image and sound, and not an illustration of the sound by an im­ age or an illustration of the image by a sound!

Clearly the political aesthetic of the Straubs is as deeply respectful of audience as it is of the details of reality.

ON DETAIL “Ninety per cent of films are based on con­ tempt for the people who go and see them.

The sentence we heard most often, even before Machorka-Muff, when we insisted on a certain detail, because we thought, there are no details — everything is detail or specific things or one thing is just as important as another — they always said, ‘ Nobody will notice, nobody will get it ’. This is based on contempt for the audience, or on cheating,

which comes to the same thing.”

Going further: “ I think we should make films that have ab­ solutely no signification, because if not we’re making trash . . . since (such a film) confirms people in their cliches. A film must destroy, every minute, every second, what it has said the minute before, I believe, because we are suffocating in cliches, because it is important to help people destroy them.”

And, “What I mean is that you can never make your films intelligent enough, because people have enough stupidity to put up with in their work and daily lives. The life they lead is horrible, it makes them more and more stupid. They can’t take any more; you destroy them and finish them off. That is why it doesn’t make sense to burden them with more stupidities.”

And in terms of the Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, in which the Straubs’ research into historical details had unearthed things that ran contrary to audience expectation, such as clear glass in Baroque churches of the time, and Bach’s use of the thumb in keyboard fingering: “Castro, or someone else, said once, ‘ The revolution is like God’s grace, it has to be made anew each day, it becomes new every day, a revolution is not made once and for all ’. And it’s exactly like that in daily life.

There is no division between politics and art, art and politics. That is also why this film in­ terested me, because Bach was precisely someone who reacted against his own inertia, although he was deeply rooted in his times, and was oppressed. But apart from that, if the film had been made about any street-sweeper, we would have gone to the same amount of trouble with the technical things and with the problems. I think one has no other choice, if one is making films that can stand on their own feet, they must become documentary, or in any case they must have documentary roots. Everything must be correct, and only from then one can one rise above, reach higher . . . If a button is wrong in a film, it can still be nice as detail, but only if the film is good, but for that the rest must be correct.

And it would be better, if this button were right, too.”

The same kind of ferocious energy is directed towards finding the proper angle, frame, and moment, in the setting up of every shot. This is something that can only be supported by ex­ periencing the austere beauty of the films. “ I believe that a film cannot be too beautiful.

It’s only a question of what kind of beauty.

Even Brecht said, towards the end of his life: ‘ We won’t do it, without a concept of be­ auty ’.You have to try not to forget that you are working with two-dimensional space, the third dimension given only by sound, and not to forget that a shot is a brick in the wall. And you have to work with space to make out of * space time, because film is condensed time . . . A shot is framed, and to find your frame you have to know which distance . . . is the one you want, and if you don’t find the dis­ tance you want, you don’t find the frame . . .

And a shot has an angle, and is coming before and after another shot, and you have a con­ struction and you have to know after which angle it comes because it takes the sense. Film is also what happens between the shots, and this is often as important as the shots themselves .. . And you have to know that the angle you choose is what lets you feel the exact relations between the characters, and between the characters and their space, and the world around them — not just in terms of sound, but in terms of the angles of walls and so on.”

Continued on P.184

GUIDE FOR THE AUSTRALIAN FILM PRODUCER:

PART 3

THE ROLE OF THE AGENT In this third part of the 19-part series, Cinema Papers contributing editor Antony I. Ginnane and Melbourne solicitor Leon Gorr discuss the role played by the agent in the -process by which a producer obtains a production-distribution contract. Other situations in which a producer will make use of the services of an agent are also discussed.

In part one of this series, our model producer acquired literary rights to a property. In part two, he commissioned and received a completed screenplay for the property. His course now is to get financing for his production; either from a group of private investors, a distributor, the Australian Film Commission or some other foreign cash source. By this stage, unless he has obtained some pre-production funds from the AFC, he will have expended some thousands of

GUIDE FOR THE AUSTRALIAN FILM PRODUCER, PART 2: CORRIGENDA

The description of precedent 6 (Assignment of Rights in a Screenplay) as an accompaniment to precedent 3 or 4 in the last part of this series is incorrect. If the producer uses precedent 3 and commissions a screenplay, the agreement gives him rights to the completed work. If he buys a completed screenplay via precedent 4, he like­ wise acquires rights to the material. Precedent 6 is in fact a short form version of precedent 4, and may be used in lieu of it, when circum­ stances deed it appropriate. Such circumstances might include a producer contracting with a writer he has had several previous dealings with; or, more likely, a writer he is in partnership with in packaging the production. In normal circum­ stances, however, precedent 4 is to be preferred for the sake of completeness.

The larger agencies represent actors and dollars of his own money. If the project does not go ahead, he will have no way of recouping them actresses, directors and writers, as well as and neither will they be of any tax advantage to producers. It has become quite common for a producer who shows a property he has acquired him.

Generally, the producer may know the heads to an agent, to find the agent becoming keen on of those distribution companies in Australia the project, not merely because it has intrinsic which are likely to invest in local production. He merit, but because it has a great part for actor A may even know some business acquaintances or B, etc. The danger here, of course, is that the who have at one time or another expressed in­ producer may find a large measure of his choice terest in putting money into films. But that will in the various elements of the film severely probably be the extent of his film financing restricted because of the way he has become skills. He will have no knowledge of the major locked into a package situation. If the agency’s and minor sources of film production or dis­ commission for the combination of talent A, B tribution entities or governments, all of whom and C outweighs that of the producer, there may may have funds available for utilization in some be a temptation for the agent to attempt to snowball the producer into accepting the fashion, for filming here or abroad.

This lack of knowledge is overcome by access package against the p ro d u cer’s b etter to an agent, preferably one based in New York, judgement.

The typical agency agreement (two samples of London or Hollywood. Strictly speaking, an agent is merely one who acts on another’s behalf which are set out in precedents 6A and 6B in certain legal and para-legal situations defined below) provides for the agency to represent the by agreement in consideration of a prescribed producer (client) for an agreed period of time in fee. But the larger international talent agencies certain areas of endeavour for an agreed fee. which represent film producers, agencies like This fee will normally be 10 per cent flat of gross William Morris or Creative Management, both compensation received by the client, but may of New-York, Los Angeles and London, fre­ rise to 15 per cent and 20 per cent in certain quently have continued access to the executives specified situations. The agent’s percentage on a in charge of productions at the major American deal negotiated during the agency period will studios and have personnel skilled both in mak­ continue outside the duration of the agency ing creative contributions to the project, via period if moneys (pursuant to that deal) continue suggestions, advice, etc, and in being able to to accrue to the client. Further, if a deal made during the agency period is renewed outside the engage in packaging.

This latter element of packaging deserves agency period, the agent is still entitled to his comment as it may or may not work to the ad­ percentage. Frequently the term “gross compen­ vantage of a particular producer. In dealing with sation’’, as received by the client producer, is both film company and bank personnel, it is true deemed not to include any payment made to the that the more definite and certain a producer is producer for living expenses, as distinct from in sketching his project, the more likely he is to fee.

Problems in the agency situation may arise for succeed in obtaining finance. Thus, in addition to providing a screenplay, and himself as a a producer who has managed to sign a produc­ producer, if he can submit a detailed budget, a tion - distribution agreement for a multi-film shooting schedule, a proposed director and one deal. If this agreement, as it generally does, or two principal members of the cast, he is in provides for cross collateralization of receipts received from the group of films, so that the much stronger position.

Cinema Papers, September— 131

FILM BUSINESS

financier may recoup his losses on an un­ successful film in the deal from profits on a successful one, the producer will find himself with a book entry of producer’s profit on one film for which he will owe an agency fee, but which he has not in reality received in his hands, because it has been allocated against the account of the film that has not succeeded.

It may be that the average Australian film producer will not find himself dealing with a foreign agency structure until he has a number of films already to his credit. On the other hand, perhaps the growing tendency to internationalize the scope of local productions will mean a speeding up of this meet-the-world process.

In any event, the first taste the fledgling producer is likely to have of the agent’s services may be in respect to foreign sales of a completed film. If the producer takes his first film to the annual Cannes Film Festival, which is essential if it has the remotest chance of being saleable in some foreign territories, he will need to engage, either during the festival or after, the services of a foreign sales agent. He should be careful to distinguish between the services of a publicist and a sales agent, both of which will no doubt be accosting him for his Overseas Trade sponsored dollar. Unless he has a film which he feels has a deal of critical merit, especially the sort of critical merit that appeals to French film critics and festival directors, he can probably dispense with the services of a publicist, providing he is prepared to do some general “hype” work

PREC ED E N T AGREEMENT*1

6A: G ENERAL

SE R VIC E S

AG ENCY

Gentlemen, This will confirm the following agreement between us: 1. I hereby engage you for a term o f . . . years, starting today, as my sole and exclusive agent, adviser, artists’ manager, and representative with respect to my services, activity and participation in all branches of the entertainment, publication, and related fields throughout the world, in­ cluding but not limited to merchandising, testimonials and commercial tie-ups, whether or not using my name, voice or likeness.

This agreement also applies to agreements to refrain from any service or activity.

2. All contracts shall be subject to my prior approval.

3. You accept this engagement and will advise and consult with me during normal business hours at your office with respect to the matters covered thereby for the purposes of developing, advancing and directing my professional career, and in connection therewith, you agree to use all reasonable efforts to procure employment for me, subject to the following: (a) You may render similar services to others, Including persons of the same general qualifications and eligibility for the same or similar employment, and including owners of package programs or other productions in which my services are used. Such representation shall not constitute a violation of your fiduciary or other obligations hereunder. (b) You may appoint others to aid you, including your sub­ sidiary and/or affiliated corporations and your associated persons, firms and corporations, but I shall have no obligation to pay any sums beyond those specified herein for the services of anyone you so ap­ point.

4. I warrant and represent that I have the right to enter into this agreement and that I do not have, nor will I enter into any contract, or incur any obligation in conflict herewith.

5. I agree to pay you, as and when received by me or by any person, firm or corporation on my behalf, directly or in­ directly, orJby any person, firm or corporation owned or controlled by me, directly or indirectly, or in which I now have or hereafter during the term hereof acquire any right, title or interest, directly or indirectly, and you agree to accept, as and for your compensation: (a) a sum equal to ten (10%) per cent of the gross compen­ sation paid and/or payable, during or after the term hereof, under or by reason of every engagement, employment or contract covered by this agreement, now in existence or made or negotiated during the term hereof, and whether procured by you, me or any third party. (b) in lieu,however, of said 10%, your compensation shall be with respect to: (i) Concerts, recitals, readings and . tours constituting or similar to any of the foregoing — 15%; (ii) lectures and/or appearances of a similar nature — 20%. (c) You shall be entitled to your said compensation (10%, or 15%,or 20%, as the case may be) with respect to any specific aforesaid engagement, employment or con­ tract, for so long as I may continue to be entitled to receive compensation pursuant thereto, including all modifications, additions, options, extensions, renewals, sub stitution s for, and replacem ents of such

132—Cinema Papers, September

himself in advance. films behind him cannot hope to match.

A sales agent, however, will be essential to in digressing slightly from our on-going him to follow up contacts and contracts made at description of the filmmaking process form the Cannes and go about the physical task of routing producer’s point of view, we have commented prints and materials to buyers. The sales agent, briefly on a task the producer faces with the sell­ frequently »a former high ranking employee in ing of a completed film, because it is in this the foreign sales department of one of the period that he will have his first relationship with American majors, generally operates out of New an agent. In part four of this series, next issue, York or London and has a series of regular and we will discuss the production - distribution reliable clients whom he services with indepen­ agreement. dent productions each year. He is able to advise the neophyte producer whether the smiling Notes re Precedents 6A and 6B: figure on the Carlton terrace is a gentleman or a rogue, whether a certain market should be 1. Both precedents appear in letter form. This is handled on a percentage deal or outright a different form of contract to the style of payment, whether certain territories need to be precedents 1 to 5. It is presented firstly for the held back until other territories are sold, and all purposes of comparison, and secondly the myriad other pieces of information that only because it is a fact that most U.S. agencies come from years of experience. The sales agent contract in this way. It is possible, however, will generally charge between 10 per cent and 15 to draw an agency agreement in the style of per cent flat for his services. Of course, he will precedents 1 to 5. continue to share in the profits of any gross or 2. Both precedents 6(a) and 6(b) are heavily net percentage deal made for a territory over the weighted in favour of the agency to the detri­ duration of the licence. ment of the contracting talent. It is an unfor­ The sales agent, like all talent agents, is fre­ tunate fact of life that, normally speaking, quently able to intercept flack between the buyer the agency will be in a stronger bargaining and the producer and generally handle things on position than the neophyte producer and this a non-emotional level as he does not have the can present the producer with a restrictive same degree of personal commitment to a pro­ and illiberal agreement on a “take it or leave ject that the producer does. Further, a sales it” basis. Many of the clauses in both agent may handle 20 films a year and have a precedents would be negotiated if the parties lifetime of contacts in the world film market in fact had equal bargaining power (e.g.: 6(a), which a local producer with even half a dozen clauses 7, 9, 12; 6(b), clause 7). engagements, employment or contracts, directly or in­ directly. For this purpose, any engagement, employ­ ment or contract with the same employer or any person, firm, corporation or other entity, owned and/or controll­ ed by such employer, directly or indirectly, including but not limited to any affiliate or subsidiary of such employer, made, entered into or resumed within the four months immediately following the termination of any prior engagement, employment or contract with such employer, shall be deemed a substitution or replacement of such engagement, employment or con­ tract. (d) “Gross Compensation”, as used herein, means one hundred (100%) per cent of all moneys, properties, and considerations of any kind or character, including but not limited to salaries, earnings, fees, royalities, rents, bonuses, gifts, proceeds, shares of stock or profit and stock options, without deductions of any kind.

6. (a) If, within six months after the end of the term hereof, I accept any offer on terms similar or reasonably com­ parable to any offer made to me during the term hereof, from or through the same offer or any person, firm or corporation directly or indirectly connected with such offer, the contract resulting therefrom (oral or written), shall be subject to all the terms hereof, in­ cluding the payment provisions of paragraph 5 above. (b) As to the proceeds of any motion picture, film, tape, wire, transcription, recording or other reproduction as result from my services covered by this agreement, your right to payment under paragraph 5 shall continue so long as any of these are used, sold, leased, or otherwise disposed of, whether during or after the term hereof. (c) Notwithstanding the termination of this agreement, you agree that, after any such termination, you shall remain obligated to continue to render agency services with respect to every engagement, employment or contract, including all modifications, additions, options, exten­ sions, renewals, substitutions for and replacements of such engagement, employment, or contract, requiring my services, in connection with which you are entitled to compensation as provided in paragraph 5 hereof.

7. (a) In the event I am presently under contract to, or hereafter enter into a contract with, any person, firm, corporation or other entity owned or controlled in whole or in part by me, either directly or indirectly (hereinafter referred to as “third party”) pursuant to which such third party has or hereafter obtains the right to furnish my services in any of the fields covered by this agreement, I agree to cause such third party forthwith to enter into a written exclusive agency agreement with you with respect to such services upon all the same terms and conditions as herein contained, specifically including such third party’s agreement to pay compensation to you as herein provided in paragraph 5, based on the gross compensation paid and/or payable to such third party, directly or indirectly, for furnishing my services.

Notwithstanding that such third party may enter into any such written exclusive agency agreement with you, I shall remain primarily liable, jointly and severally, with such third party, to pay compensation to you as provid­ ed in paragraph 5 above, based on the gross compen­ sation paid and/or payable to such third party, directly or indirectly, for furnishing my services. (b) If such third party fails, for whatever reason, to execute such written exclusive agency agreement with you, you shall nevertheless remain my exclusive agent to repre­ sent me in connection with my services on the terms and conditions as herein contained and I shall remain

8.

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11.

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liable to pay compensation to you as provided in this contract and in the preceding sentence hereof. (c) For the purposes of paragraph 5 above, the term “gross compensation” shall be deemed to include such gross compensation.paid and/or payable to such third party.

No breach of this agreement by you shall be deemed material unless within 30 days after I learn of such breach, I serve written notice thereof on you by registered mail and you do not remedy such breach within 14 days after receipt of such notice. (a) Notwithstanding anything elsewhere contained in this agreement, should I not obtain a bona fide offer, from a responsible source, for my employment in any field in which you are authorized to represent me, pursuant to this or any other contract, of any nature in any field in which you are authorized to represent me therefore, pursuant to this or any other contract, during a period in excess of four consecutive months in the term hereof, throughout which time I am unemployed and ready, willing and able to accept employment and to render the services required in connection therewith, either party shall have the right to terminate your engagement hereunder by notice in writing to such effect sent to the other party by Registered or Certified Mail to the last known address of such party; provided however, that such right shall be ineffective if, after the expiration of four months but prior to the time I exercise such right, I have received from a responsible source a bona fide offer of employment. No termination hereunder shall effect your rights under paragraph 5 and 6 hereof to receive compensation after such termination and/or the expiration of the term hereof upon the terms and con­ ditions therein stated.

This agreement shall be governed by the laws of the State of Victoria.

This agreement shall not apply with respect to my activity covered by any other exclusive agency contract between you and me, so long as such other agreement remains in effect.

You may assign this agreement and all rights herein granted to a corporation controlling, controlled by you or to any corporation affiliated with you or to a subsidiary wholly owned by you, but any such assignment shall not relieve you of your obligation hereunder.

In the event this agreement is signed by more than one per­ son, firm, corporation or other entity, it shall apply to the un­ dersigned jointly and severally, and to the activities, in­ terests and contracts of each of the undersigned in­ dividually. If any of the undersigned is a corporation or other entity, the pronouns “ I” , "me” or “ my” as used in this agreement shall refer to the undersigned corporation or other entity, and the undersigned corporation or other enti­ ty agrees that it will be bound by the provisions hereof in the same manner and-to the same extent as it would, had its name been inserted in the place of such pronouns.

This instrument sets forth the entire agreement between us.

No promise, representation or inducement, except as herein set forth, has been made by you or on your behalf.

Should any provision of this agreement be void or unen­ forceable, the rest of this agreement shall remain in full force. It may not be cancelled, altered or amended except in writing and no termination of any other agency agreement between us shall have the effect of terminating this agreement. "

AGREED TO AND ACCEPTED: Yours very truly,

By -------------------------------------

FILM BUSINESS

PRECEDENT 6B: GENERAL MATERIALS & PACKAGES AGENCY AGREEMENT

Date __ _______ 19 Gentlemen, This will confirm the following agreement between us: 1. I hereby engage you for a term of_________ years com­ mencing________________ as my sole and exclusive agent and representative in all fields and media, throughout the world, to negotiate for, and with respect to, the dis­ position, sale, transfer assignment, rental, lease, license, use, exploitation, furnishing or otherwise turning to profit (herein collectively referred to as the “disposition” ) of all and/or any part of the following: (a) (i) All creative properties and package shows now or at

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any time during the term hereof created in whole or in part by me or in which I own or hereafter during the term hereof acquire any right, title or interest, directly or indirectly, and, (ii) All creative properties and package shows in which any person or firm owned or controlled by me, directly or indirectly, have any right, title or interest, has any interest. (b) The creative properties and/or package shows present­ ly called or identified as:.____________ I have the right to enter into this agreement and I will not hereafter enter into any agreement which will conflict with the terms and provisions hereof.

You accept the engagement and agree to advise and con­ sult with me at my request at your office in any locality in which you may then maintain an office with respect to the matter covered thereby, subject to the following: (a) You may tender similar services to others, including owners of creative properties or package shows in which my creative properties or package shows are used, and owners of other creative properties or packages shows, and whether or not similar to or com­ petitive with the creative properties or package shows covered by this agreement. (b) I may from time to time desire to acquire certain rights, properties or materials from or employ other clients of yours for or in connection with my creative properties or package shows. I agree that you may represent such other clients in their negotiations with me and in such negotiations you will be acting solely as the agents or representative of such other clients and not as my agent or representative. Your representation of or your receipt of compensation from such other clients therefore shall not be construed as a breach of your obligations hereunder, or of any fiductary or other relationship between you and me, and you shall nevertheless be entitled to your compensation hereunder. (c) You may appoint others to assist you, including your subsidiary and/or affiliated corporations and your associated persons, firms and corporations, but I shall have no obligations to pay you or such appointees any sums except as specified herein. (d) With respect to syndication, merchandising, adver­ tising, testimonials and commercial tie-ups and stock and amateur stage rights in and to the creative proper­ ties or package shows hereunder, you shall have the exclusive right to represent me in negotiations with any person, firm or corporation specializing therein to set on my behalf in connection with such activity, and you shall co-operate with such person, firm or corporation.

The compensation to be paid by me to any such person, firm or corporation shall not diminish any sums payable to me hereunder, except as specified in paragraph 4 (b) hereof with respect to syndication. (a) i agree to pay to you, as and when received, during and after the term hereof, and I hereby assign to you 10% of the "gross compensation” paid and/or payable to me or any person, firm or corporation on my behalf, directly or indirectly, or to any person, firm or corporation owned or controlled by me, either directly or indirectly, or in which I now have or hereafter during the term hereof acquire any right, title or interest, or controlled by me, either directly or indirectly, or in which I now have or hereafter during the term hereof acquire any right, title or interest, pursuant to or as a result of any contract covered by this agreement, whether procured by you, me or any third party. In lieu however of said 10%, your compensation shall be with respect to: (i) printed publications in the United Kingdom; 15% (ii) printed ublication in other countries of the world other than the nited States and the U.K.: 20%; (iii) concerts, recitals, readings and/or appearances of a similar nature, including engagements and/or tours for dramatic and/or musical shows: 15%; (iv) amateur stage rights: 20%; and (v) lectures and/or appearances of a similar nature: 20%. (b) If I am engaged in the business of syndicating television programs generally, and I undertake or a third party un­ dertakes the syndication of any package show hereunder or the reproductions thereof made primarily for television, then the distribution fee in connection therewith and the actual cost of exhibition prints and direct advertising shall be deducted from the gross compensation derived from such syndication, in com­ puting the compensation to be paid by me to you hereunder. If I undertake such syndication, the distribu­ tion fee shall not exceed the rates normally and generally charged. If a third party undertakes such syn­ dication, the distribution fee shall be the amount paid by me or deducted by the distributor. (c) You agree at my request (provided I have retained such rights) to negotiate, or to assist me in negotiating for the disposition of television reproductions hereunder for distribution in syndication: (i) to a distributor or syn­ dicator, and (ii) in the major foreign markets with which you have contact. (a) The term hereof shall be automatically extended, restricted or renewed from time to time with respect to any specific creative property or package show or any rights therein whenever anti so long as my contract or contracts covered by this agreement, relating to such specific creative property or package show, or any

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rights therein, shall be or continue in effect, and for one (1) year thereafter, or the stated term referred to in paragraph 1 above, whichever is the longer. (b) If any disposition is made of any reproduction of any creative property or package show covered by this agreement, in whole or in part during or after the term hereof, my obligation hereunder to pay compensation with respect thereto shall continue, during and after the terms hereof, whenever any disposition thereof is made.

6. No breach of this agreement by you shall be deemed material unless within 30 days after I learn of such breach, I serve written notice thereof to you by registered or certified mail and you do not remedy such breach within 14 days after receipt of such written notice.

7. (a) Except as set forth in sub-paragraphs (b) and (c) of paragraph 7 hereof, any disposition of any creative property or package show or reproduction thereof (including stock or other ownership thereof) covered by this agreement, or any disposition effected by merger, consolidation, dissolution or by operation of law, shall be subject to all of your rights hereunder and to my first obtaining and delivering to you an assumption agree­ ment in writing of my obligation hereunder, by the party to whom any such dispositions made, or if such disposi­ tion is made by operation of law, then said assignee shall either assume this agreement in writing, or take such rights subject to the provisions shall likewise be applicable to any subsequent disposition of the type set forth in this sub-paragraph, of any such interest or any part thereof. (b) The provisions of sub-paragraph (a) of paragraph 7, shall not be applicable to a disposition of a creative property or package show or reproduction thereof, or any rights therein, in an arms length transaction for full and adequate consideration. With respect to such dis­ position, the provisions of paragraph 4 hereof shall apply, except that if the disposition is an outright dis­ position, then the provisions of paragraph 7 (c) hereof shall apply (c) In the event of a contemplated outright disposition by me of all, or a part of, say right, title and interest In and to a creative property for package show, or of any reproduction thereof (including stock or other ownership thereof covered by the agreement) then I agree to give you not less than fifteen (15) days prior written notice thereof, by registered or certified mail, setting forth the proposed terms and conditions thereof and pertinent information respecting the proposed purchaser. You shall then have fifteen (15) days from the receipt of such notice for amended notice, (if any) within which to elect one of the following (such election shall be made by registered mail or certified mail): “A” to take your compensation for and In connection with such disposition, or “ B” to waive your compensation on such disposition. If you elect to waive your compensa­ tion on such disposition pursuant to “B” above then concurrently with such outright disposition the purchaser shall execute and deliver to you a written assumption agreement, in form acceptable to you, assuming with respect to any and all subsequent dis­ positions of said creative property(s) and package show(s), including all reproductions thereof, and rights therein, all of my obligations to you pursuant to this agreement (as it may have been therefore amended). In the event I fail to obtain and deliver to you such assump­ tion agreement, then I shall remain obligated to pay to you such amount of compensation, as would have been payable by the purchaser, had such assumption agree­ ment been obtained and delivered to you. If you elect to take your compensation, for and in connection with such disposition pursuant to “A” above, then the follow­ ing shall be applicable: (i) I shall pay to you ten per cent (10%) of the gross compensation paid and payable to me, or on my behalf in connection with said outright disposition, without any deductions whatsoever, and in addition thereto. I shall require the purchaser to deliver to you a written assumption agreement, in form acceptable to you, with respect to such disposition. If l fail to ob­ tain such assumption agreement, then I shall main­ tain an obligation to pay to you such amount of your compensation on such residual payments as would have been payable by the purchaser, had such assumption agreement been obtained and delivered to you. (ii) If you fail to advise me of your election with respect to such contemplated outright disposition, then you shall be deemed to have elected the compensation referred to in “ B” of paragraph 7(c) hereof.

8. When used in this agreement, the following terms are defin­ ed as follows: (a) “Creative properties” shall mean and include all rights, interests, properties and material of a literary, enter­ tainment, advertising and promotional nature, in­ clu d in g , but not lim ite d to, all cha racter, characterization, compositions, copyright, design, dramatic and/or musical works, drawings, formats, for­ mulas, ideas, outlines, literary works, and musical ac­ companiments, plots, treatments, scripts, sketches, themes (literary and musical), titles, names, trade mark, trade names, patents, slogans, catchwords, or any part or combination or any of the foregoing and any reproductions of any of the foregoing or any other rights, interests, properties or material, which may heretofore have been or may have, been acquired, written, composed or utilised for, on or in connection therewith, or developed therefrom, including but not limited to, any creative property or package show based upon or produced as part of, or developed from any element of, any creative- property or package show covered by this agreement. (b) “Package shows” means any and all manner of ex­ ploitation of creative property, by any present or future means or process, and whether transitory or permanent in character, including but not limited to any show, production, presentation, program or recording and any series thereof, and any reproduction of any of the foregoing; and any person, unit, group, organization or combination of elements or other creative property or

package show which may heretofore have been or may hereafter be acquired, written, composed, utilized, presented, produced, or exploited for, on or in connec­ tion therewith or developed therefrom, including but not limited to, any creative property or package show bas­ ed upon or produced as parfbf, or developed from any element of any creative property or package show covered by this agreement; ánd any and all forms of merchandising, part of, or developed from any element of, any creative property or package show covered by this agreement; and any and all forms of merchan­ dising, advertising, testimonials and commercial tieups in connection with or relating to any creative properties or package shows. (c) “ Reproduction” means the incorporation or embodi­ ment of any creative properties or package shows, or any part thereof, in any motion picture, kinescope, film, recording, transcription, tape, wire, cassette or other form of production or reproduction by any process now known or hereafter devised. (d) “Gross compensation” means all moneys, properties and considerations of any kind of character, including but not limited to earnings, fees, royalties, rents, bonuses, gifts, proceeds, allowances or deductions to cover rerun fees, shares of stock or profit and stock op­ tions without deduction of any kind. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, there will be no deduction of any of the following, any share of the proceeds received by a theatrical producing manager; distribution fees (ex­ cept as provided in sub-paragraph 4 (b) ; deferred or postponed payments or rerun fees or residual fees or any other costs and expenses whether paid or payable by me or by any other person, firm or corporation, profit participations or ownership interest of any other per­ son, firm or corporation, including those of any person, firm or corporation to whom any disposition hereunder is made. With respect to any sale or assignment of a package show or creative property or any part thereof or any right or interest thereon covered by the agree­ ment to a person, firm or corporation having a profit participation or ownership interest therein, a fair and reasonable value for such participation or ownership in­ terest shall be added to and included as part of gross compensation in connection with such disposition. (e) “Contracts covered by this agreement" means any and every agreement, oral or written, directly or Indirectly relating to or connected with the disposition or the refraining or withholding from or limitation upon the dis­ position of any creative property or package show or any part thereof or any right or interest therein, covered by this agreement, whether procured or negotiated by you, me or any third party, whether any such agreement is now in existence or is made or negotiated or to become effective during the term hereof (or within 6 months after the term hereof, if any such agreement is on terms similar or reasonably comparable to any offer made to me during the term hereof and is with the same offeror thereof or any person, firm or corporation directly or indirectly connected with such offeror); and all agreements, oral and written, substituted for or replacing any such agreement, directly or indirectly, and all modifications, supplements, extensions, ad­ ditions and renewals of any such agreement or sub­ — stitutions or replacements thereof, whether made, negotiated or to become effective during or after the term hereof and whether procured or negotiated by you, me or any third party. (f) “Term hereof" or words of like reference means the period specified in paragraph 1 hereof and any and all extensions or renewals thereof pursuant to the provisions of paragraph 5 (a) hereof. (g) “Syndication” means any disposition of the television and/or radio rights in a package show anywhere in the world, other than a disposition for national network broadcasts and repeat national network broadcasts in the United States. (h) “Print costs” shall mean the actual cost of printing 35 mm and 16 mm prints (or making a new dub of a tape in connection with a live/tape program), and specifically shall not Include such costs as cans, reels, shipping, insurance, dubbing or redubbing, editing, storage, customs, duties, tariffs, taxes or any similar charges or costs.

9. In the event, I, acting alone or as a party of partnership, joint venture, corporation, or other entity, shall at any time hereafter enter into an exclusive General Materials and Packages agency agreement with you, relating to specific creative property or package show covered by this agreement, then during the term of such subsequent agency agreement, said specific creative property and package show shall be deemed excluded from the scope of the agreement, but it shall not otherwise be so excluded.

10. This instrument sets forth the entire agreement between us.

No promise, representation or Inducement, except as herein set forth, has been made by you or on your behalf.

Should any provision of this agreement be void or unen­ forceable, the text of this agreement shall remain in full force. This agreement shall not be cancelled, altered or amended except in writing, and no termination of any other agency agreement between us shall have the effect of terminatng this agreement. This agreement shall bind any heirs, executors, adminstrators, successors and assigns; and the pronouns “ I” , “me" or “my” where used in this agreement shall likewise refer to said heirs, executors, ad­ ministrators, successors and assigns. You may assign this agreement and all of your rights hereunder to a firm or cor­ poration controlling, controlled by or under common con­ trol with you or to any firm or corporation affiliated with you or a subsidiary wholly owned by you, but no such assign­ ment will relieve you of your obligations hereunder.

11. In the event this agreement is signed by more than one per­ son, firm or corporation, it shall apply to the undersigned, jointly and severally, and to the activities, interests and con­ tracts of each and all of the undersigned. If any of the un­ dersigned is a corporation or other entity, the pronouns “ I” , “ me” or "my” where used in this agreement shall likewise refer to such corporation or other entity.

AGREED TO AND ACCEPTED: by -------------- --------------

Yours very truly, ---------------------------

★

Cinema Papers, September— 133

The Ethics of Being

KRZYSZTOF ZANUSSI 134—Cinema Papers, September

Top: Patterns from Structure of Crystals.

Centre above: “ Let us be sure we are not unconsciously imposing a philosophy which has not been defined by ourselves.” Marek, who is obsessed with a need for recognition, and Jan, who lives content within himself in the country. Structure o f Crystals.

Above: “The reason Jan (Jan Myslowicz) has chosen to stay in the country is to be able to communicate with neonlft ” sm .rhirp »f rrv ^ a U ---------------— -

At the age of 20, Krzysztof Zanussi abandoned his course in physics at the University o f Warsaw and enrolled at PW STiF in Lodz. There, after six years training, he graduated with the diploma film, “ Death of a Provincial” . The next year, Zanussi joined the “Tor” film unit o f Film Polski and directed the short, “ Face to Face” , for television.

ZanussPs first feature, “Structure o f Crystals” , was made In 1969. This moving study o f a clash between two old schoolfriends in a remote, country area firmly established Zanussi’s reputation as a director obsessed with scientists and ethics, a label that belies his deeply emotional work. In 1971, Zanussi produced his most successful film, “ Family Life” , a gently satiric look at a young man’s futile attempts to disown his past and family ties. Then, in that same year, he directed the extraordinary “ Behind the W all” , a disturbing look at peoWas there any specific reason why you stopped doing physics at university and changed to film­ making?

At university, our studies were very competitive and there was no room for hesitation or doubt. It is very hard to get into university and very hard to finish, but when you have finished, work is guaranteed — that is the price. So, to be a stu­ dent of physics I had to do everything well, which I was suf­ ficiently talented to do. What was confusing Though was that I spent four years studying physics always feeling that something was wrong .

To describe it better, you should take into consideration that I had begun my studies in 1955 when I was only 15 years old and that that was rather early to go to university.

So, this was probably an important factor in my decision to leave.

Physics was also a field of fair­ play and 1 wanted something where values were somehow solid, where what is good and what is bad,-where what is true and what is untrue, is clear and examinable. Probably this factor was also important.\It was an aristocratic approach to a subject which I thought of as purex and demanding.

On the level of anecdote, I always quote one of my professors — who is now my spectator. He later told me he had noticed that my interest was more in people than in matter, more in people looking through a microscope than in the reality shown by the microscope — that makes a nice metaphor. I felt this as well and became disillusioned with physics, feeling it had promised me more than it delivered. Now I know this is a natural illusion of youth.

Perhaps I had to understand very early on that physics was unable — that science was unable — to give u n iv e rsa l an sw ers to m any philosophical and elem entary questions about the nature of our existence. I should not forget, however, that it was not only I who got disillusioned with my physics, but that physics got disillusioned with me.

So, I switched to philosophy for about three years, though during my last year of study I was already commuting to the film school in Lodz. 1 was doing many other

things at the time, making amateur films, doing amateur theatre and writing with the people who found­ ed the first Polish film society.

I have mentioned things that had some impact on my future and there were many other things that I have forgotten about because they apparently made no impact on me.

But I describe all this in detail, because there is one element in this question which touches a more philosophical level. If you ask what brought a person from one interest to another, somehow you are sup­ posing that there is an answer, that there was a “ w hat” , while I am full of doubt that there is. I want to remain open to much more disturbing conceptions: was it just a coincidence or chain of coin­ cidences? Was there a decisive mo­ ment which I can place in time when it happened; when I was on a platform of a certain railway sta­ tion and had to decide where to go, which ticket to use? I know this might have been a moment of decision, or it might have been later because in taking another train I might have changed my mind. But if I look back on that, I try to find in my life a chain of logical reasons and results which are the,product of my method of analysing my life.

But I don’t want to block myself against the disturbing supposition that it might have been, as well, a chain of completely irrelevant in­ cidents. At least, let us be sure that in looking at our lives we are not u n c o n s c io u s ly im p o sin g a philosophy which has not been defined byxourselves. So that is why I ask you if there is an answer — maybe thereJs no answer.

On seeing a lot of one director’s work, one tends to look for patterns in them. And the most notable recurrence in your films is a fascina­ tion with scientists. Now Jan in “Structure of Crystals” is very isolated, almost an island in a sense, and that is what a lot of scien­ tists are like — they can exist perfectly serenely within the boun­ daries of their knowledge, but . . .

Oh, I strongly disagree with your description of my character. I thought he was quite the opposite: he has taken an extremely social orientation. Of course, he has this contact with only a few people — maybe four or five, maybe 10 —

pie clawing for response in an alienated environment. “ Illumination” followed in 1971 and proved a complete reversal in cinematic style. Tlie simplicity, the precision was gone and was replaced with rapid, random cutting, a seeming irreverence for framing and lighting, and a fascination in structural fragmentation. Zanussi then went to the U .S . in 1974 to make “ The Catamount Killing” , still unreleased in Australia, but found the experience traumatic. H e returned to Poland, and in 1975 completed his latest film, “The Balance” , again with the brilliant actress Maja Komoroswka, whom he had used in “ Behind the W all” .

Zanussi was in Melbourne as a guest of the Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals when he was interviewed by Scott Murray. but it is a non-isolation attitude. He has communication with his wife, which is very unusual in our world, he has communication with some old people and with some simple people surrounding him. More un­ usual is that he communicates with people of different professions. So, he is extremely open. The reason he has chosen to stay in the country, far away from his professional life, is to be able to communicate with people. The isolated islands are mainly in the big towns, the big urban conglomerations where peo­ ple meet hundreds of people around them, but where there are no links between them — and that makes them isolated.

What I was trying to suggest was the problem some scientists face when attempting to see their

seems to me so irrelevant, so dated.

The way the question is pronounced seems to be completely dead, it doesn’t mean anything at all. I can’t stand it anymore. The scien­ tist who discovers suddenly that his theories are being used in a certain social context was just absentminded in time — he should have dis­ covered it as a school kid. We know all that. One cannot command respect if one is so late in discover­ ing problems that have been dis­ cussed, explored and described for centuries, or, at least, so widely and deeply in our last three decades.

There is really nothing new to be said.

For me it is an important question because of the widespread attitude that scientists don’t react to the emotions, that they are cold, less

“ I believe that scientists, at least in my society, are the most conscious, socially and politically,of any social group.” Structure of Crystals.

professions in perspective. One can be perfectly happy within the tight little entity of, say, pure mathematics, until one steps outside and sees its relevance. Then, a lot of them leave their study of science . . . , Oh, but I would say that that is a very academic problem. It is really extremely unimportant or, at least, extremely well explored. This all started with Oppenheimer and atomic physics, this question about the responsibility of the scientist. It

human. I find those two questions very connected . . .

Why? Emotion is something completely different, Because when you exist in an entity, the solution of a problem within it can bring such joy in itself that one becomes more and more part of that entity and less responsive to what is happening outside . . . \ ^ ; ; ; I can’t really understand that.

Cinema Papers, September— 135

KRZYSZTOF ZANUSSI

My knowledge of scientists is that some of them are extremely emotional and some are not. Of course, the development of rational thinking is a means of giving us control over the expression of our emotions. I like people to control the expression of their emotions. I don’t like very spontaneous people.

Spontaneity is not a value I appreciate very much. Maybe Anglo-Saxon society would change my mind, because there is a kind of reserve, or Victorian ethos, which I observe and which I find very irritating. On the other hand, I feel that there is such a confusion when we talk about what is natural and c u l tu r a l, s p o n ta n e o u s and restricted, that I tend towards the things which are unpopular out of simple perversity, because I feel that the other side has been so wide­ ly explored that it has become banal and m e an in g le ss. G en erally speaking, I don’t see any difference between the emotional feelings of this particular social group and that of any o th e r so cial g ro u p .

Politicians are not supposed to show their emotions, but they act according to them. And you can observe m any o th e r so cial groups doing the same. I would say it is as irrelevant talking about emotions as it is about ethnic backgrounds. They say th at Mediterranean people are more emotional than Scandinavian. That doesn’t mean very much. Are

characters from Bergman films not emotional? I think that in terms of human life all the things are com­ parable — even if the expression is different, the cultural patterns are different, ethnic patterns are different and so on.

Why then such a fascination with scientists, if you are not putting them in a special group?

You are m aking a wrong assumption. I didn’t put them in a special group for one reason, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t exclude other reasons. (Laughter). No, I think there are other reasons. Let me explore two. One elementary one is that I am an author-director.

1 write my scripts and I consider writing very important, not from a purely professional point of view, but from the point of view of con­ sidering how I function in people’s minds. In other words, and it is hard to put in words, a writerdirector is something different to just a director, especially in my society where this difference counts. It has some meaning to people, and for me, if a statement is made by somebody who is ready to prove it, ready to testify with his own life experience that what he says he believes in. We are very suspicious of people who tell us facts they have learnt from other people, or from books they have read, and who advocate these ideas

Above: Maja Komorowska as the sister Bella in Family Life.

Right: “The rights of our freedom are much more limited than we think, and it is probably better to know it.” Marta (Maja Komorowska) with her husband, Jan (Piotr Fronczewski), after her return. The Balance.

Above right: “ If there is a need, there must be a something which created it.” Franciszek (Stanislaw Latallo) with girlfriend. Illumination.

136—Cinema Papers, September

as if they’d lived them through. So from that point of view, being a u th o r-d ire c to r m eans th a t whatever I say has to be proved by my own life experience.

Definitely my life experience is limited, to a certain extent, to this circle or social group. I feel more comfortable describing it than other groups. I would feel funny making a film about workers, because I haven’t lived a worker’s life and it would be an excursion, both intellectual and emotional, which would be degrading to other people, and to me. For that reason I have limited myself to those people I really know.

But there is another reason, in that there is always risk that if my knowledge is limited, then may be it is better not to talk at all. I believe the scientists, at least in my society — and I am not sure if this is true in many Western societies, though it is true in my society, and absolutely true in Russian society — are the most conscious, socially and politically, of any social group.

Their knowledge and understan­ ding, and their sense of respon­ sibility, is much much higher than the average. They face problems and perspectives which haven’t been considered or understood by the vast majority of the society.

That’s why I find them important, because in our thinking they are im­ portant. I know it is difficult for someone living in your society to

figure this out. But in my society there is no room for a shoemaker who becomes an owner of a chain of factories producing shoes. If you totally eliminate this large field of human activity, and have no such biographies around, a scientific career is one of the most desired and desirable, along with an artistic career or sports career. , In these fields, skill and some kind of fair-play or solid grounding in values is respected. You can’t make a great career as a physicist if your theories are totally wrong, even if you have very powerful friends and corrupted protectors.

They won’t help you, they won’t make you a great artist. You must show talent and character.

These are fields where people make relatively honest careers, fields which are very much regard­ ed as interesting and exciting. And so for that reason — a third reason — scientists play an important role in society. So, now you have three motives and I think that is enough to explain why I am so often among scientists. Of course, I have tried to liberate myself of that limitation, to a certain extent, in The Balance. I have escaped into the life of official clothes — his clothes — and I thought that this was an exception. In Family Life, the people are engineers and have nothing to do with science. I have proof that sometimes I have tried, b u t I know t h a t w h o e v e r

KRZYSZTOF ZANUSSI

remembers my films, remembers them as films about scientists. I am doing my next film about scientists, so I have to defend my choice.

There is nothing in the subtitles of “The Balance” to indicate what Jan did . . .

No, there was. For some reason most people don’t pick it up. In Poland, everybody knows what he is doing because his character is very unusual — he talks about the stock. Stock is something that we don’t understand at all and is the most exotic of things, so people know immediately that he is work­ ing in the state-owned bank which deals with foreign exchange and foreign money. That is why it is only mentioned once: when he speaks about German currency and the bet he won.

Given the range of experience about which you consider it honest to deal, do you ever feel that you should, at some stage, extend your films outside these boundaries?

Well, it’s something that is so flexible it is hard to define. Yes, of course, we have more experiences than our professional experiences and we know other people, not only those professionally connected. We are probably already equipped to place our films in different professional groups. For example, I can make a period film in costume even though I haven’t lived in the past. It is possible. But up to now, with the realistic language I am using, I feel more comfortable do­ ing films that are close to my ex­ perience, rather than to my artistic experience. This is one of the dilem­ mas: which source of experience should we be exploring and using?

Are we formed by life, or are we formed by films? Are we using the experience and language of others, or are we using our life experience and creating our own language? Of course, there is no definite choice possible, but there are certain in­ clinations. There are certain film­ makers who are fed by films, and certain writers who are fed by the writing of preceding writers. There are some others who reject this kind of initiation and who dig through their own life experiences to find their own structures and means of ex p re ssio n . Both ways are legitimate, but I am more inclined to explore my life experience than my knowledge of other people’s ex­ pression.

A lot of people tend to label you as a moral or moralistic director.

How do you feel about that?

I am afraid this word has an en­ tirely different meaning in my vocabulary to yours in the West, so I rather dislike it as a word. In the European vocabulary it has an unpleasant, perjorative meaning which it doesn’t have for me. For us, the word “ morals” , or better

“ ethics” — “ ethics” is more neutral — is a powerful'word that hasn’t been abused. I am very proud if my compatriots find moral issues in my films. Definitely, I am interested in values, because values are the basis of any ethic. If this is enough to call me a moralist then I am a moralist.

I am not interested in describing things, but in evaluating them, in saying and finding what I like in life and why and what I consider valuable. So, from that point of view, I am interested in how people breathe and how they realize their ideals, why this or something else is their motivation.

Somebody who supports a most progressive idea for the most dis­ gusting of reasons, which often happens, is not a very nice and plea­ sant character for me. I may con­ sider his or her activity as socially useful, but I can ’t be very enthusiastic about it. So when I observe people and see their at­ titudes towards ideas, I observe as carefully as I can their motivation.

I try to read for what values they struggle; not what they say, but what they really mean. I see fanatics, people who are seeking for power, saying that they are fighting for the liberty and freedom and equality of our people, and I wonder if they really mean it. I think maybe they have joined a cer­ tain movement only because they felt a necessity of joining something that is against the actual situation, against the given establishment. I have very little hope that these peo­ ple really have these ideals in mind, even if they are not conscious of it.

Does this mean that it is very dif­ ficult for people to escape their past?

In “Family Life”, for example, the returning son tries the whole time to convince himself that he has nothing in common with his father, and yet he ends up with the same twitch. Do you, therefore, see a lot of people who think they are escaping, but who are really just reacting against those things they find extremely dif­ ficult to get away from?

Exactly. I believe that the rights of our freedom are much more limited than we think and it is probably better for our own sake to know it, because when we know it, or understand it, we can deal with it. But when we don’t, we are vic­ tims of our illusions and people are often greatly victimized by their il­ lusions — this is to say, I hope, what Balance is about. It is illusion of liberty, an illusion of liberation, which is for me completely illconceived. The sense of social liberation that my protagonist in Family Life had is again an illusion.

In a way, I made this film as my reaction to common belief and fashion that people of the younger generation could prove they were free and do what they wanted. The same with The Balance. I made this film because the people around me were telling me that they really

“We are the victims of our illusions.” Wit (Daniel Olbrychski) and his father.

Family Life.

Below: Franciszek at the hut prior to his expedition up the mountain. Illumination.

could go away and that nothing would happen; that they were really free to do what they wanted on their, let us say, personal level. I wanted to say, “ No you are not, it doesn’t make sense” . You are able to do anything physically but you may destroy yourself, and self­ destruction is the highest price we pay for wrong movements.

I have thought a great deal about what my next film will be, as one always does. I have just dropped a project, one which was very developed, and probably it would make a very good illustration of my next step along the same line. I postponed it because I realized that I was not yet mature enough to make it, that I should do something

else instead. I wanted to make a film which would again try to ridicule the common idea of liberation. As it was supposed to be an international film, it would be a reaction to many trends that one observes among young people, mainly in the West, and which irritate me very deeply.

I will try to make a film about the contradictions between nature and culture. Most people now dis­ covering this contradiction tend to take option for nature. I consider this attitude irresponsible and childish. My conception of human nature is not so optimistic, but my conception of human culture is quite optimistic.

Continued on P.182

Cinema Papers, September— 137

Part 2 of a historical survey of The climate of work for women in traditional­ ly male occupations and professions following World War 2 can only be described as hostile.

The post-war backlash which lasted into the 1960s is by now well documented in feminist literature. For many of those women who lived through it, the frustration of abilities and the deprivations it caused were almost irreversible.

Women had made real headway in the profession of journalism during the war, when they moved into areas such as ¿lews reporting and sub-editin-g formerly sacred to men, and it was ground that they never completely lost. But there seems to have been no comparable infiltra­ tion in the much smaller field of film production.

Two exceptions — women who carried on from a war-time start — were Catherine Duncan and Gwen Oakley.

Catherine Duncan, a Melbourne writer and actress, was engaged by the Netherlands East indies Film Unit, then in war-time exile in Melbourne, to write commentaries for transla­ tion into Malay. When the famous documentary film m aker Joris Ivens was appointed Netherlands East Indies Film Commissioner, she took the opportunity to join his training crew.

But Ivens resigned following the Dutch armed intervention against the new Indonesian Republic. Catherine Duncan resigned with him.

She wrote the commentary for his film Indonesia Calling, made clandestinely in Sydney, about the 138—Cinema Papers, September

refusal of Australian waterfront workers and seamen to load and man Dutch ships.

Duncan then worked as a scriptwriter for the Film Division of the Department of information (now Film Australia, which I’ll continue to call it for convenience, as it has changed its name several times). She worked with John Fleyer, and his memorable Journey of a Nation (1946), . about Australian railways, owes its impact, in part, to her vivid blank-verse commentary.

She next made what she now calls “an abor­ tive attempt” at directing several films spon­ sored by the Department of Immigration. They were probably no better or worse than the average Film Australia product at that time, but it was obvious that her most important contribu­ tion was as a writer. She says what always in­ terested her most ^bout film was the relationship between word and image.

Catherine Duncan went to Europe in 1947, and worked again with Joris Ivens on his documentary The First Years, writing the com­ mentary, and also researching and scripting the Czech sequence. But that was the end of her filmmaking career. She married a Frenchman and has since lived in Paris, although she con­ tinued her association with film for many years as executive secretary of the International Federation of Film Archives, and as secretary of the International Federation of Film Societies.

Gwen Oakley joined Supreme Sound Systems (now Supreme Films) in 1944. Supreme, begun

by Mervyn Murphy in 1935, produced spon­ sored documentaries and supplied facilities and expertise to the industry, including processing.

Oakley had been an actress on stage and in radio, and had worked in production for the Lux Radio Theatre. At Supreme, Murphy trained her in editing, projecting, sound recording, black and white and colour processing. She also handl­ ed the office work. She says: “ In those days everyone pitched in and did everything.' Our work was our hobby. I didn’t have a holiday for 27 years.”

Since the advent of television the firm has ex­ panded considerably, and Gwen Oakley has had to be more and more involved in administration, leaving the technical work to others. After Murphy’s death in 1971 she became managing director.

Supreme has played a major role in assisting local filmmaking, especially in the 1940s and 1950s. It put equity, in the form of facilities, into some feature films, one of them Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty’s first film The Phantom Stockman (1953), which returned a profit. Un­ fortunately, some of Supreme’s later in­ vestments in other production companies left the firm deeply in the red.

Gwen Oakley and Mervyn Murphy were wellknown as benefactors to many industry per­ sonnel: if they could they would give work to

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Far left: Lilias Castle.

Centre: Detail from the poster for Caddie. Helen Morse and Takis Emmanuel.

Left: Producer Pat Lovell (right) and production secretary Pom Oliver.

There was resentment within the organization, but Hawes gamely coped with this. What he had little control over were the public servants in Canberra who were in overall charge of the unit.

Their hostility to women was marked. Those women working in production were doubly un­ derpaid. They not only received the usual Public Service lower rate of pay for women, but were invariably classified as “ assistants” even if they were doing the main job. Many were also the subject of innuendo and derogatory memos from the Canberra “ ockers.”

women inAustralianfilmproduction technicians out of a job or fallen on hard times.

Often what they did was at a loss to themselves, and some people took advantage of their generosity and kindness. But she regrets none of it and has great respect for many of today’s young filmmakers.

One of the few places to go, if you wanted to train in films in the late 1940s and 1950s, was Film Australia. It had been set up as the result of the pre-war visit and recommendations of John Grierson, although the war postponed its actual setting-up. Ralph Foster, its first Film Com­ missioner, was replaced in 1946 by Grierson’s nominee Stanley Hawes, an Englishman who had spent the previous six years as head of production at the Canadian National Film Board.

A, dichotomy existed in Film Australia’s staff from the early days — a dichotomy which mirrored the fabric and ethos of Australian society at large. On the one hand, there were the technicians — the cameramen, editors, etc. A few had come from the now defunct Cinesound organization and from other feature companies; more from newsreels, always the most con­ sistently thriving film activity in Australia. Most of these technicians were unsympathetic, if not hostile to the idea of “documentary” and often embodied the anti-intellectual strain of the Australian character. Many disapproved of

by Joan Long

higher education for film people, and were par­ ticularly hostile to women in films. They were the equivalent of the “industry hardheads” , to whom, as Bill Shepherd described it, the McDonagh sisters had been “a bit of a joke” .1 The post-war backlash added to, and exacer­ bated, the deeply-rooted Depression mentality, that every woman in a job was doing a man out of one, although they fouad this attitude hard to sustain at a time of full employment. Their at­ titudes were reinforced by the traditionally male bureaucratic super-structure inseparable from a Public Service organization. The preference to returned servicemen clauses of the Repatriation Act were rigidly adhered to in the permanent Public Service and kept many able women out of career jobs. Although most Film Australia per­ sonnel were classified as “temporary” public servants, the same general attitude applied.

On the other hand, there were the young enthusiasts who had knocked on Film Australia’s door for jobs. Few of them had any experience in films (although there were notable exceptions like Maslyn Williams,' John Heyer and Shan Benson). In the 1940s and 1950s, Stanley Hawes included a few women among this latter group. If they showed any promise at all, he gave them editing and directing oppor­ tunities equal to those of the men.1 1. Interview with Bill Shepherd. Cinema Papers, Issue 4, pages 296-302.

Jennie Boddington was writing film reviews for a magazine after the war, and was trying to get a job in films. Her first success was with Eal­ ing Films on Eureka Stockade, directed by Harry Watt in 1947, as a wardrobe assistant.

During the production she became assistant to June Cann, the continuity girl, who now runs a leading actors’ agency in Sydney.

After Eureka, Boddington went to work at Film Australia as a cutting-room assistant, and became the first woman there to receive an editing credit. In 1950 she went home to Melbourne, for personal reasons, and worked for some years for the G.P.O. Film Unit. It con­ sisted of two people — Boddington and the cameraman. She directed many instructional and public relations films and documentaries, shooting all over Australia. She also wrote the scripts and did the editing.

With the introduction of television, Bod­ dington went to the ABC in Melbourne as an editor. At that time she was the only trained editor there, and she says it was probably for this reason that she encountered no discrimination against women — except when it came to the pay packet.

Jennie Boddington later remarried, and set up her own company, Zanthus Films, with her husband, a cameraman. Over the next nine years they made 15 sponsored films, some of them prize-winning and major documentaries of their day. She was producer, scriptwriter, direc­ tor and editor.

Her particular forte was dramatized documentary, and her films had a flair and sensitivity which set them apart from most examples of the sponsored films of the day.

In 1967, she decided to retire from the partnership. She felt that she wanted to spend more time with her children, who before had to be looked after by domestic help, and planned to work on a novel. But her husband died in 1970, and with three children to support she moved back to Sydney, hoping to get work in films or television. She could find only temporary work, so she returned to Melbourne.

Jennie Boddington has now given up films, but for the past five years she has been curator of photography at the National Gallery of Vic­ toria, where she has built up an impressive photographers’ gallery, and has mounted many exhibitions. She selected and edited the photographs for the YWCA book, Woman 1975, published for International Women’s Year.

Rhonda Small was a director at Film Australia for some years, joining as a production assistant in 1958. She had been a trained Cinema Papers, September— 139

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Daphne Campbell in her one and only Australian film, The Overlanders. Costumes for the film were designed by Dahl Codings.

Stanley Hawes (left), Stuart Legg, Rhonda Small and Ian Dunlop in Film Australia’s projection theatre.

Jennie Boddington directing Three in a Million. Her husband and business partner, Adrian Boddington, has his back to the camera.

physiotherapist, but was interested in still photography, and worked for a time with her family’s photographic business. She realized that films were her real interest, and her first job was with Cineservice in Melbourne as an assis­ tant cutter. At Film Australia, she became an assistant director, then director. Between 1959 and 1966, except for a year abroad working for British film companies, she directed eight documentaries, including Portrait Of An Australian, and Workout — a beautiful film about a boy and his horse. In 1966, she left Australia and went to live in Britain, where she has been working on children’s features as an editor, and has also been directing short films.

Lilias Castle has been one of the most prolific and energetic women filmmakers, specializing in sponsored documentaries and industrial films.

For 13 years she was in partnership with her husband, Norman, and in those years made 26 films.

After attending Brisbane University, Castle studied still photography at the Guildford School of Art in Britain, where her interest switched to filmmaking. When she came home to Brisbane she made a film in 16mm black and white, shooting it herself. She said that when she sent her material to the labs in Sydney for processing, she pretended she was* a man: “ I thought I’d get better service that way,” she said. Gwen Oakley told me that they were im­ pressed with the material they got from “that man in Queensland” , and later tried to find “ him” to offer him a cameraman’s job.

In 1956, Lilias Castle took her film to Stanley Hawes at Film Australia and asked to be a cameraman. Even Hawes was astonished. In those days, nearly everything was still being shot in 35 mm. Hawes exclaimed: “ It’s impossible!

You can’t climb Ayer’s Rock with 35mm gear!”

She suggested that the men could carry the 140—Cinema Papers, September

heavier gear, but Hawes said “no” , saying the men would not be in that. He told her to go away and finish her university degree and then come back. But she was determined. She got a job at Channel 7, measuring film, and was there for three months when Hawes offered her a job in the film library. She later became a production assistant, wrote some educational scripts, and directed some nature films.

Castle then decided to go to the Institute Maureen Walsh, one of Australia’s few freelance Film d’Hautes Etudes Cinematographic — the Paris Top:producers. film school — but found it too elementary and Above: Joy Cavil], who is soon to produce a feature based rigid. She wrote to Alan Resnais, whose film on the life of champion swimmer, Dawn Fraser.

Hiroshima Mon Amour she greatly admired, and he put her in touch with a documentary group, plans to direct herself. Lilias C astle’s Groupe de Trente, to which many of the New partnership with her husband has since broken Wave directors belonged. At the same time, she up. tried to educate herself in film history and Like most women Filmmakers, she has found technique at the Cinematheque. She feels that that the problems with men rarely come from her work is still very much influenced by the the people you actually deal with in the field — New Wave style. She also learnt a respect for the the engineers, company executives, public director-writer relationship, and points out that relations people, the workers. In fact, she feels Alan Resnais talks constantly with his writer up that they actually seem to appreciate a woman to, and throughout, his productions. director and that they are usually accepting, Castle returned to Film Australia and made helpful and friendly. In her experience, and that several more films. But, now married and of others, the prejudice also comes not from the pregnant, she left and set up Fraser-Castle films men in the crew (there was some in the old days, with her husband. He attended to the business but it is dying out), but from the men in the film side, going out and getting the jobs, while she organizations, the people in power. did the research, writing, directing and editing.

Their clients have included most of the biggest companies in Australia and top government Dahl Collings was an established painter boards, and for these films Castle has been to before she came to filmmaking. Her husband, some of the remotest locations in Australia.

Geoffrey, also began as an artist, and their art She freely says that without the generosity of training and talent was evident in the films they her father in helping to finance the company, she made together in the 1950s. could never have done what she did. After 1970, While a student at the National Art School in commissions became more sparse, and sfie Sydney, she won the drawing scholarship twice. sought outside work. She did the rounds of In 1935, she and Geoffrey went to London, various sections of the ABC, all headed by men, where their work embraced painting, graphic but found most doors closed to her except, design, photography and film. They worked with significantly, that of a woman, Kay Kinane, who Maholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes, and came into gave her work making film segments for young contact with now well-known workers in the people’s programs.

British documentary movement — John Grier­ She has since directed several films under con­ son, Basil Wright, Harry Watt and Robert tract for Film Australia, as well as an industrial Flaherty. > documentary. She has also written a feature They made their first film together in Spain in screenplay, a film for young people, which she 1936, and in 1938 they set off for Tahiti to make

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Garry Pankhurst and Ken James in Fauna’s Skippy. Joy Cavill was producer.

He brought the magic and the faces of Hollywood to the Australian bush A film that has all the earmarks of success"

John Laws and Googie Withers in John McCallum’s Nickel Queen which was produced by Joy Cavill.

a film in 35 mm black and white, spending their savings on fares and equipment. By 1939, she had two daughters, and back in Australia, she continued to work as fashion artist and designer.

After the war she resumed her contact with film by designing the costumes for the Ealing films, The Overlanders (1945) and Eureka Stockade (1947).

In the 1950s, she and Geoffrey set up their own production company, Codings Films. Dahl designed and directed four art films for Qantas — Russell Drysdale, William Dobell, Sidney Nolan, and Toehold In History (about the Nolan series on Gallipoli). She also collaborated with Margaret Nelson as the orphan Sarah in Picnic at Hanging Geoffrey on two films about Aboriginal culture, Rock. The film was originated by Patricia Lovell, who went on to jointly produce it with Hal and Jim McElroy.

The Dreaming and Pattern Of Life, and on a number of other productions, including a semi­ Top: Jill Robb, part-time commissioner of the Australian technical film about the engineering construc­ Film Commission and marketing manager at the South Robb was associate producer of tion of-the Sydney Opera House. Many of their Australia Film Corporation.

The Fourth Wish. films have won awards and prizes. For some years now, she has been painting full-time, and She then went overseas to see the film scene. recently held an exhibition at the Bonython In Canada, she started a small company, Gallery of works inspired by the Burdekin River Maureen Walsh Productions, and ran it for four area, Queensland. years. She says: “ In North America the oppor­ tunities are boundless. All you need is talent and stamina. The old Aussie phrase, ‘but you’re a Maureen Walsh, one of Australia’s few woman’, just doesn’t exist.” She made spon­ freelance women producers, has had an all­ sored documentaries for big firms and govern­ round career in film and television dating back ment bodies, advertising films, two features, and to the early 1950s. She first worked on the crew a multiple screen presentation for the of Whiplash — the series made here by Venezuelan government for Expo ’65 in Americans for television — in the production of­ Montreal.

She was offered a job in Hollywood, but the fice, preparing breakdowns, script editing, scheduling, contracts, doing location reports. factory system didn’t appeal to her, so she came home. “The return to Australia was a disap­ She also had “on-the-floor experience.”

After similar work on some features and pointment to me. I had been lulled into a career documentaries, she joined the editing staff of the security in North America which doesn’t exist in ABC in Sydney. She says simply: “The ABC of Australia. It was hard for me to accept that the early 1960s was not a place of advancement business men here were still programmed on the for ladies.” She left to join Waratah Production ‘but you’re a woman’ bit, and the money they for a television series, Adventure Unlimited, offered on projects was insulting.”

She went to work for Fauna Productions and working in the cutting-room by day, in the for Ron Taylor Productions. She produced the production office at night.

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Joan Long directing The Passionate Industry.

presentation films for Boney and Barrier Reef — and handled post-production for Inner Space and for Attacked By A Killer Shark, the only locally-produced program shown on commercial channels on the first night of colour. She was producer for a new television series, Daughter of Neptune, and is now working on a film about the children’s author May Gibbs, which she will produce.

Joy Cavill is one of the most experienced producers in Australia, man or woman. She had always wanted to work in films, but couldn’t find a job, and went into radio as writer and producer’s assistant. In the post-war years she went to Britain, hoping to find film work, only to strike the industry in one of its periodic slumps.

She worked on a chain of magazines doing film and music reviews, but, as it was evident she wasn’t going to get the work she wanted, she came home.

Continued on P.180 Cinema Papers, September— 141

Marco Ferreri on L'Ultima Donna Your new film deals with ‘the In the sad satellite town of a huge European metropolis, a couple’, doesn’t it? young wife runs away from her husband to try and fulfil herself It’s the story of a man who is independently of him. In the course of a day, the husband sees searching for his ideal woman, a himself transplanted into the role of mother. While on one hand person impossible to find. It depicts a new relationship develops, more physiological than intellec­ the life of three characters — a tual, with his son who is barely a year old, on the other, he isn’t man, a woman and a child — in a able to change his ideas about women, so he still goes searching suburb of one of these new satellite towns. The man tries to build a for a woman with whom to establish a traditional type of relationship in the only way he relationship. However, the undertaking fails and the man knows, in the way he has been castrates himself. ta u g h t — th a t is, a ra th e r The film which recounts this story is “ L/Ultima Donna”. It traditional one. And it doesn’t work is directed by Marco Ferreri (“ La Grande Bouffe” ), with — not through his fault, or the woman’s fault — but because it just Gerard Depardieu and Ornella Muti in the principal roles.

Robert Schar interviewed Ferreri in Rome. Translation is by can't work.

Relationships between men and Clare del Mercato. women d o n ’t ex ist; couple relationships do, which is a different matter. The couple is an institution external to man; it’s the fear of solitude . . . enslaved in the process. Their lives most repressive superstructure ever are programmed for them. It’s a to have been imposed on man, Exactly, that solitude is at the way of living in a function. It is not that’s a fact. The biggest deceit is bottom of it, and fear of solitude is natural for a child, outside the that if a man and a woman meet always fear of death. By living a natural function of man. Man is they immediately have to face a community life you can evade born for a freedom he doesn’t have. problem, the problem of the couple. solitude in thinking of others.

All this sacrifice, this castration Solitude is the fundam ental and frustration of man serves a But surely there is an attraction .. problem of man, a problem that no non-system — a simple, inevitable man has ever sought to resolve, if one. A system which tries to make not by means of the couple, because of man an anti-social rather than a Why does the attraction have to the couple serves as a pawn in the social animal, and to make of man lead to the couple? Why do economic and power games of an animal which knows only how to relationships between men and society, games which are ex­ live in two’s. Instead of uniting, it women necessarily have to end up traneous to man. And they get us fragments the tribe, the clan, the like that? used to it. I have seen it while family. These don’t exist any directing the film. longer, only these small nuclear Perhaps this corresponds with the Children are already caught and groups. That is to say, the couple

Gerard Depardieu, as the man who cuts off his penis to become a man and not a phallus, with Ornella Muti. L’Ultima Donna.

142—Cinema Papers, September

doesn’t derive from instinct; its a structure that has been superimpos­ ed on man. At least, that’s how I see it.

And this leads us to question the whole organizational system of the state . . .

Not only of the state, but of the world, because the couple is an in­ stitution everyone tries to defend, from the left, from the right, from the centre. This is where our society comes into it. Not even socialist countries have solved the problem.

They still live basing their lives on this false assumption. Man is torn in enormous frustration. In the moments in which this frustration helps determine other things, in which it helps determine different possibilities for the development of society, it is felt less, while in the moments when this frustration forms part of a huge mechanism which falls to pieces, it is felt more strongly.

Well, your protagonist carries out a sort of conscious self-destruction .

He looks for a solution.

But you don’t point to a solution .

Continued on P.187

“ Relationships between men and women don’t exist; the couple is an institution external to man” . Gerard Depardieu and Ornella Multi in L’Ultima Donna.

Marco Bellocchio on Victory March What aspects of militarism did After the three-and-half hour documentary “ Nessuno o Tut­ vou intend to highlight in “Victory ti” , about new experiences in open psychiatry, Marco March”?

Bellocchio returns to making feature films based on fiction. In “Victory March” he concerns himself with exploring Italian The film was intended, initially, as a propaganda piece about militarism , thereby continuing his dem ystification o f military life in which the army itself traditional institutions which he began with his trilogy “ I Pugni was going to be the protagonist. Ex­ in Tasca” , “ Le Cina e Vicina” and “Nel Nome del Padre” . cept in these last months, during The story of “ Victory March” is very simple. Passeri this last year, the press has spoken (Nichele Plácido), a young soldier from the southern provinces, a lot about military service and a whole series of things are being hasn’t succeeded in evading military service by the usual ploys. modified. It doesn’t interest me at Against his will he presents himself to the army, but employs a the moment to bring into the policy of passive resistance. However, his captain, Asciutto foreground those more transient aspects of military service — I (Franco Nero), his head full of obtuse and authoritarian mean the bad food, the danger and military ideas, succeeds by means of “fascist-like training” , as the har mf ul nes s of the e n­ Bellocchio calls it, in making this soldier appreciate military vironment, etc. — because I think life. A father-son relationship is born, and the captain uses the these things will change. The soldier to spy on his unfaithful wife (Miou-Miou). Instead, his I t a l i a n a r my will b e c o me something less burlesque than the wife falls in love with the soldier. When everything comes to light, the wife leaves both husband and soldier. one I personally knew.

This rather conventional story is for the director nothing but But what problems tend not to be a pretext for demonstrating a series of contradictions at the overcome; what remains the same?

The fundamental concept of dis­ centre of a military institution and for carrying out a critical cipline, the lack of recognition of analysis of military ideology.

The following interview was conducted by Cinema Papers th e s o l d i e r ’s a u t o n o m y , a democratic relationship between Italian correspondent, Robert Schar, and was translated by soldiers and superiors. The words Clare del Mercato. have changed — before, discipline had to be blind, now it has to be respectful, loyal — but, in fact, the principle remains the same. Follow­ Almost all your previous films others where everything happened ing this line of thought, I abandon­ have presented us with a closed inside an institution — the family, ed the typically sensational aspects microcosm. Will we see this also in the college —■here I have sought to of an anti-military campaign “Victory March”? come to terms with the military already begun by the press, to con­ ideology through the psychological centrate more on military ideology.

No, in the sense that unlike the r el at i onshi ps between t hree

Miou-Miou and Patrick Dewaere as the spied-upon lovers in Bellocchio’s Victory March. .. .

characters, (i.e. the captain, his wife and a soldier), instead of through a whole range of characters. The film explores their private relationships, trying to represent their feelings and, above all, trying to represent changes in their feelings — which is something new in my films in the sense that in none of m.y previous films has there been a discovery, for example, of love. Instead, here we have the wife of a captain who falls in love with a soldier, and a relationship, something we can call constructive, is born. I t’s an attempt to describe feeling in a positive way, in the sense that it goes against a series of mistaken fascist principles, positive in as much as it contains within itself a liberating force in respect to its prior condition. The soldier will also discover some other positive things; i.e. his relationships with the other soldiers which he had aban­ doned, caught up as he was in this double relationship of filial depen­ dance on the captain and attraction towards the captain’s wife.

Therefore, there are three focal points in the film: the psychological study of the main characters, something rather new for you, the “fascist-like training” that the cap­ tain exercises over the soldier and the discovery of corporate life on the part of the soldier . . .

Continued on P.187

Franco Nero, as Captain Asciutto, indulging in some fascist-like training methods with his soldiers. Victory March.

Cinema Papers, September— 143

CANNES 1976

Antony I. Ginnane J '

Edith Clever, as the Marquise, lies in a drugged sleep after being saved from near-rape by a Count. Eric Rohmer's The Marquise d’O.

Over the last three years, Australia’s involvement In the annual Cannes Inter­ national Film Festival has grown to the extent that this year a significant number of local film directors, producers and critics would be aware of the varied and multi-facetted event.

Cannes is really a five-ring circus In which a representative sprinkling of films from most countries, commercial and non-commercial, vie for critical and box­ office honours.

From the o ffic ia l c o m p e titive screenings generally held twice daily in the large main cinema in the festival building to the aesthetically heavyweight Critic’s Week and Directors’ Fortnight, from Les Yeux Fertiles in which film ver­ sions of other media works screen to the Market where films search for dis­ tributors and vice-versa, Cannes is a concentrated fortnight of viewing, buying and selling films.

I proposed to examine b riefly highlights of these sections of the Festival and then to consider this year’s Australian participation by the Australian Film Commission; its successes and its failures.

THE OFFICIAL FESTIVAL Normally the films selected In the official competition by the represen­ tatives of the Festival, in conjunction with the various government film bodies, are prestige entries, frequently having an American major already involved in dis­ tribution (excepting Eastern block countries). Often they premiere in Paris Immediately after the Festival, and open 144—Cinema Papers, September

in the U.S., Britain, Canada and Australia shortly after. This year, the official com­ petition yielded from its non-competitive and competitive entries a better collec­ tion of films than in previous years. As general consensus was that the standard of the other competitive areas was down this year, this was some compensation.

abstract. There is none of the calculated drive that fired Losey’s masterwork The Damned, nor even the ambiguities that as r e c e n tly as T h e R o m a n tic Englishwoman stunned us. Here all is subservient to the message and the heavy Kramerish significance of the Vichy government’s anti-semitic purge.

It is rare that a Losey film does not have at least one moment of extreme violence, frequently mental rather than physical — a moment that in The Concrete Jungle, Chance Meeting, Boom or Secret Ceremony, slices

through the elegance of the mise en scene and reveals a universal vision — but there is none of this in Mr Klein.

Bertolucci’s 1900 will certainly merit a place in cinema history, if for no other reason than the sheer audacity of its scope. This 5-hour 20-minute epic, presented in two parts at Cannes, is nothing if not an endurance test. It sets out to trace the rise of socialism in Italy from the turn of the century through to the halcyon days following World War 2.

The patriarchal landowner (Burt Lan­ caster) is at the height of his powers in 1900 when the film opens. Two infants are born: the landowner’s grandson played by Robert de Niro; the son of a peasant family played by Gerard Depar­ dieu. Bertolucci uses the growth to manhood of these two youngsters as the backdrop of his tableau. He charts the development of the league of industrial w o rk e rs ; th e p ro g re s s o f in ­ dustrialization; World War 1 and the post-war rise of agrarian unrest resulting in a final confrontation.

Bertolucci’s skill with narrative cannot be questioned as the intricate web he weaves in the first part of the film, up to the outbreak of World War 2, is a master­ piece of economical construction on an epic scale. Regrettably, the second half of the film, dealing with World War 2 and its aftermath, becomes a pastiche of subGodardian sloganizing that is little more than undistilled propaganda.

There are various and contradictory reports on whether Bertolucci plans to re-edit 1900 to a more manageable length. If he does, his attentions could be fruitfully directed to this latter part.

Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver is a return with a vengeance to the hellbent melodramas of violence that first found full fruition in Box Car Bertha. Both films drew heavily in their use of colour and bloody violence of Minnelli’s 1950s melodramas, significantly Some Came Running and Home from the Hill. Paul Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver again dips into this milieu. With New York as a sort of Dante’s Inferno, Scorsese and Schrader chart psychopathic behaviour against a psychopathic environment and social system. The final orgy of violence is probably the most effective use of mailed-fist cinema since Sam Fuller’s climax in Underworld U.S.A..

There is an uneasy feel, however, about the ambiguous endorsement of vlgilantlsm that the postscript skirts.

Miguel Littln’s previous films, The Jackal of Nahueltoro and The Promised Land, especially the latter, should have prepared us for the awesome, baroque splendour of Acts of Marusia. This Mex­ ican film, which chronicles the events in Chile in 1907 when the reactionary government determined to take on and crush a well-organized worker’s strike in a saltpetre mine in Marusia, manages to combine the didactic exactness of later Godard with the folk-loric beauty of Glauber Rocha. The violence that lurks beneath the surface of the class struc­ ture, so neatly visualized early in the film, erupts with a Peckinpah-like fury as the film moves towards its Inexorable climax.

Joseph Losey’s Mr Klein marks a return to some of the concerns that manifested themselves in Assassination of Trotsky: human suffering, pessimism, the relationship between art and politics, individual responsibility for collective guilt and so on. Unfortunately, this tale is of Robert Klein, a rich young Paris art dealer who Is confused by the authorities for a Jew of the same name. The film, set in occupied Paris in 1942, finds Losey sludging through the stylistic con­ trivances that marred his fashionable Pinter collaborations, notably Accident.

Alain Delon, as Klein, excellent actor though he Is, finds himself forced by Losey to skirt the real, the unreal and the

Cybill Sheperd is chased by Robert de Niro as she leaves the skin-flic he has taken her to.

Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.

KODAK (Australasia) PTY. LTD Motion Picture & Audiovisual M arkets Division

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Russell Boyd, Director or Photography on'Picnic at Hanging Rock’ talks about Kodak films __

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. . . “After three years with Cinesound Newsreel in Melbourne, I’d shot quite a few cinema newsreels and several T.V. commercials, all in black and white. Using color film was almost unheard of in those days.

We used color for 16mm industrial documentaries and the occasional cinema commercial.

We were all a little terrified of the medium” . . . “I joined H .S.V.7 News Department in 1964 and went out onto the streets to photograph life around me. At the time, we, as cinematographers, all experimented with various film emulsions and different brands and in the end came back to Eastman Plus X film for black and white and Ektachrome film for color. These two emulsions became the standard to work from and progress with” . . .

“Later, while working at Supreme Films, I started a love affair with Eastman Color N egative.” . . . “Picnic at Hanging Rock was a coming of age for all of us. From the start I felt we had to capture the ‘Tom Roberts’ light of the Australian countryside, and I think we did. Eastman 5247 Color Negative was just coming of age and provided us with a pallette to paint with” . . .

“Technology is closing the gap between creative expression and the means of recording it. Kodak is helping to close the gap.”

Kodak color films the key to creative expression.

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CANNES FESTIVAL

"A sort of blend of mild debauchery and Woodstock style flower power” . Miklos Jancso’s Private Vices Public Virtues.

The paradox in Private Vices Public Virtues, the new film by Miklos Jancso,

is the contradiction between Jancso’s search for an ever restrictive film form and the young' emperor’s search for a liberated hedonistic existence. In an im­ aginary empire, the heir to the throne and a group of his young friends attempt to provoke a scandal within the power structure by resorting to what they call "harmonious chaos", a sort of blend of mild debauchery and Woodstock style flower power. The regime crushes them, kills them and, via a propaganda machine, gives out a completely false story on their deaths.

Jancso’s film is, of course, about the mechanics of power and repression, about the interknitting of the hegemony of church and state. The austere filmic style lends itself admirably to the total difference Jancso pictures between the adherents to the old regime of power by divine right and the prince’s young friends who gambol, almost like children, through the chateau they have set themselves up in. The film, too, is a clear attempt by Jancso to reach a wider audience. His last film Electreia had 11 sequences. Vices has 343 cuts.

Eric Rohmer's The Marquise d’O shared the Cannes Grand Prix with Taxi Driver. It is probably the least easy of Rohmer’s recent films to come to terms with. The plot, such as it is, concerns the

unexpected pregnancy of the Marquise d' O, who has been saved by a young Prussian officer during a skirmish in Lombardy in 1799. Her saviour is the culprit, and the act took place during the melee while she was unconscious.

However, for a large part of the film she refuses to accept that she is pregnant, and then refuses to believe the man who saved her is the man responsible. The Marquise is played by Glenda Jackson look-a-like, Edith Clever, and Nestor Almendros is again the director of photography. The story is apparently based on historical fact, but the treat­ ment is cold, clinical and detached and makes Clair’s Knee, for example, look positively sentimental. At first viewing, it is difficult to relate this film to Rohmer’s earlier work, save for the rigid morality, implicit as always.

THE CRITICS’ WEEK AND THE DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT

Dennis Hopper as the sergeant in Henri Jaglom’s Tracks.

in the company of a grizzled combat sergeant, the ethics of war, Vietnam and elements of political behaviour are dis­ sected. Dennis Hopper’s performance as the sergeant is a nice contrast to his manic role in Mad Dog. For the second year in a row, Australia obtained an entry in the Directors’ Fort­ night. Fred Schepisi’s The Devil’s Playground can probably lay claim to be­ ing the best film yet seen here. An always gripping, and at times terrifying analysis of the systematic use of institutional power to oppress, this tale of a group of youngsters and their relationship with a group of teaching Catholic brothers in a juniorate, manages to be disarmingly generous to the individuals it portrays while at the same time fearless in its portrayal of an often unpleasant, fre­ quently incredible reality. Only for one brief scene does the film fail to jell; when one of the brothers visualizes, in rather 1970s fashion, an underwater sexual fan­ tasy. The film is set in the early 1950s.

Patricio Guzman’s Battle of Chile: Coup d’etat is a revealing study of the

Henri Jaglom’s Tracks only oc­ casionally lapses into the preten­ tiousness which marred A Safe Place.

Here on a train ride from the east coast to the west coast of the U.S., as the body of a Vietnam casualty is being taken home

downfall of a populist government and should be required viewing for those studying Australia’s own constitutional coup.

This year’s scandal at the Festival was Oshima's Empire of the Senses. Shown

at least a dozen times by public demand, there were still many who were unable to view it. As it is reviewed elsewhere in Cinema Papers, I will only note it here.

But it will become something of a cen­ sorship cause celebre if any attempts are made, as I would hope they would be, to bring it into Australia either for festival or commercial release. It is certainly a most sexually e x p lic it film , containing elements of everything that most filmgoers would categorize as ‘hard core’, yet it is a most unerotic film and shares with almost all of Oshima’s other films, that I have seen, a concern for the expression of emotion through physical contact.

David Helpern’s Hollywood on Trial is a curiously unsatisfying account of the effect of, and background to, the House Committee on Un-American activities inquiry into the film industry. Little new material appears and no real attempt is made to give the material any historical perspective. Nonetheless, this chronicle of a cellu lio d w itch-hunt has its fascinating moments when the sheer memorableness of the historical footage overcomes the filmmaker’s Inertia.

THE MARKET

If Orson Welles’ F for Fake dominated the films screened in the Cannes market place last year, this year it was Brian de Palma’s new film Obsessions. Starring Cliff Robertson and Genevieve Bujold it is a virtual remake of, and certainly bla­ tant homage to, Hitchcock’s Vertigo. (In­ cidentally, Hitchcock’s new film Family Plot was shown put of competition on the Official Festival program’s closing day, to a rather downbeat reception.) ' Miguel Littein’s Acts of Marusia, a recreation of the crushing of a miner’s strike in Chile in 1907.

Scraggs and Tom wrestle it out in Fred Schepisi's The Devil’s Playground, the only Australian film to be shown in the Director’s Fortnight this year at Cannes.

Daniel Schmid's L’Ombre des Anges (Shadow of Angles) with Rainer Werner Fassbinder (on the floor).

Obsessions, replete with a Bernard Herrmann score that is so much more a summation of the man and his work than his Taxi Driver one, places Bujold and Robertson in a series of plot situations that ever so closely resemble those faced

by Stewart and Novak. Not only in plot situation, but also in mise en scene, does it reflect the original, with many se­ quences duplicating Hitchcock’s film, camera angle by camera angle. If Obsessions were only that, of course, it would be merely trite plagiarism. In fact, as in Sisters and to a lesser extent in Phantom of the Paradise, De Palma brings the concerns and morality of the 1970s to bear on the rigid Catholicism la­ tent in Vertigo. Obsessions is less an ethical chess game than a melange of subterfuge and praeternatural goings-on blended with a touch of cynicism.

Cinema Papers, September— 145

CANNES FESTIVAL

Roger Corman’s New World Pictures had a number of new releases on view. A highspot was the jointly directed (Joe Dante and Allan Arkush) Hollywood Boulevard, a spoof on exploitation film­ making which, but for its plethora of in­ jokes, could be the comedy of the year.

The director of Death Race 2000 and Cannonball, Paul Bartel, plays a Von Stroheim look-alike trying to make the “greatest ten-day movie ever” . A pile of Corman staff, proteges and graduates including George Armitage, Jack Hill and Martin Scorsese, mingle with clips of a variety of AIP and New World produc­ tions — a Philippines sex-in-a-woman’s -prison number; a Poe styled horror quickie; and off-cuts from Death Race 2000 — as the king of the “ B” films sends himself up.

A notable Canadian presentation was Nicholas Gessner’s The Little Girl who Lived Down the Lane, starring the Taxi Driver nymphet, Jodi Foster, in a sort of Our Mother’s House treatment of a young girl, who, assisted by her crippled friend, Martin Sheen, manages to kill and dispose of a number of adults who intrude into the world she has created for herself. There is a real and tangible sense of evil present in the film which Gessner has managed to convey without recourse to the usual cliches inherent in films of this type.

Two other productions stand out as worth catching if they surface in Australia. One was Mark Lester’s Bobbi Joe and the Outlaw, with Lynda Carter and Marjoe Gortner in a Bonnie and Clyde/Sugerland Express series of situations. The film lacks the anarchic power of his earlier Truck Stop Women, but confirms his pre-eminence in the current ranks of American exploitation filmmakers. The other was Gerry O’Hara’s low budget British film, The Brute Syndrome, which, lurking beneath a guise of sexploitation thriller, in fact emerges as a disturbing expose of mar­ tial violence and the “ battered wives” problem. An unknown British cast manages to convey the terror of un­ provoked and unexplained violence.

Roman Polanski and Isabelle Adjani in Polanski’s The Tenant.

The films that achieved most commer­ cial success at Cannes this year reflect that lesson. If 1975 was the year of The Man from Hong Kong, 1976 was the year of Philippe Mora and Jeremy Thomas’ Mad Dog. By early on in the Festivaf securing an upfront distribution advance of $U.S. 300,000 from the new and up­ coming distribution-production entity Cinema Shares, headed by ex-British Lion’s U.S. head, David Blake, Mad Dog will become the first Australian film to have major and sustained playoff in the U.S. (a market that until now only Petersen and Hong Kong have skirted). It was the internationalism of Mad Dog, headed by Dennis Hopper’s brilliant per­ formance, that led Blake to pick it ahead of, say, Caddie, Devil’s Playground or Picnic. Only two other films secured sub­ stantial cash advances at Cannes: The Trespassers, with its non-Australian, big city charm and Fantasm, which was part­ ly shot in the U.S. with U.S. actors.

THE AUSTRALIAN REPRESENTATION

The official delegation of Australian films and filmmakers to Cannes this year was under the u m b re lla of the Australian Film Commission. Filmmakers were again assisted by the recognition of the Festival by the Department of Overseas Trade for the purposes of the Export Market Development Grants Act, thus enabling them to recoup certain, eligible expenditures made at, or for, the Festival. It seems that at the moment the Fraser government is giving thought to cancelling or massively reducing the future operation of this scheme. Film­ makers who have been to Cannes over the two years the scheme has been ac­ tive will already be lobbying; others, es­ pecially those who have any intentions of making commercial productions with some prospect of foreign playoff, should also be taking appropriate steps.

The Commission’s representatives at Cannes this year managed to avoid repeating many of the more obvious errors of tact and judgment that the AFDC representatives committed in 1975. More credit must be given to them as we were again faced, as in 1975, with a group of well-meaning advisers who had had no previous experience of the Festival. Criticism s of this year’s representation were less widespread and more general in their application. It is dif­ ficult for filmmakers to be objective, but there perhaps did seem to be an uncon­ scious attempt on the part of the Com­ mission’s representatives to fight a losing uphill battle in directing the focus onto the AFC’s favourite child, Picnic at Hang­ 146—Cinema Papers, September

“Aujourd’hui, Mad Dog.” Director Philippe Mora (left), producer Jeremy Thomas and associate producer Richard Brennan outside the Ritz cinema, Cannes.

ing Rock, in spite of the fact that it was clear very early that it was Mad Dog that

was really attracting interest.

An aside here is appropriate. Last year, it was necessary to castigate the Australian press for their vitriolic abuse of Australian endeavour at the Festival. Not so this year. A generous amount of space and time was given by the media to this showcasting of the local Industry. But, again, the AFC seemed to funnel atten­ tion (and the material published did almost totally emanate for the AFC) on

Picnic at the expense of D e v il’s Playground, Mad Dog, and others.

Perhaps the Value of Cannes to those filmmakers and AFC members who attended, was the valuable contacts and overview of distribution and exhibition trends that it invariably presents. In a year when more than ever before p ro d u c e rs , b oth re p u ta b le and otherwise, were kiteflying future produc­ tions for feedback and pre-sales, there is a lesson for the Australian film industry to learn.

While The Devil’s Playground won high critical plaudits (and deservedly so) and both Caddie and Picnic have ended up with potentially rewarding distribution deals post-Cannes, as has Let the Balloon Go, none of these films, in my view, will penetrate the international market to Mad Dog’s degree. In Picnic’s case, of course, its success here tends to make the foreign market less vital.

In 1976-77, Australian filmmakers have to decide which of two paths to walk down, weigh up the respective potential rewards of each and write their budgets accordingly. A conscious decision has to be made on whether one shoots for the local or international market, for while there are some subjects that perhaps combine appeal to both sectors of the market (Mrs Fraser may prove to be an example), these are in the minority. In looking ahead to Cannes next year, the AFC may well consider some projects honed for the local market to have little or no foreign playoff potential and advise accordingly. The producer who has done his homework properly will not be unduly concerned by this, as he will have already chosen his market, rather than slipped into one by chance. Sooner or later the guessing has to stop. ★

CANNES FESTIVAL

CANNES 76 - SELLING A U S T R A L IA The newly appointed marketing manager of the Australian Film Commission, Alan Wardrope, had his baptism of fire at the recent Cannes Film Festival, where he was engaged in selling the Australian films the AFC was presenting to world buyers. ‘Cinema Papers’ contributing editor, Antony I. Ginnane, and managing editor, Scott Murray, discuss the Cannes experience.

Can you tell us anything specific about these deals?

They were mostly for theatrical rights only and most territories involved sub­ stantial sums in advance, with a percen­ tage split after recoupment. We have had many experiences where an Australian film has been sold to foreign territories to some distributor, and though the film goes into profit, the expenses have been structured In such a way that they soak up the producer’s share. At least this time the producers have started off with money in the bank; and we are hoping that the sort of deals we have done are with distributors who will look after the film and there will be further returns from the territories.

There was an attempt this year, by a couple of individuals, and perhaps by the Commission as well, to involve some of the financial sources available at Cannes in upcoming production. Are you able to say anything specifically about that, and, moreover, how do you see that sort of future production role melding with the sale of the completed films at Cannes next year?

What happened at Cannes was that the South Australian Film Corporation did have a couple of specific projects in which they were interested involving some overseas investment. One in par­ ticular would be shot in a European country, so it was very desirable and logical that there be some foreign par­ ticipation. But the Commission didn’t go on a fund-raising expedition. In fact the reverse was true. We were inundated by people hearing that this very rich Com­ mission had ail these dollars to spend and lots and lots of wonderful films were being made in Australia. All they wanted was our dollars and our help in doing deals. We had to remind them that although we didn’t have a closed door and were interested in co-productions, we are, after all, the Australian Film Com­ mission and not the world film com­ mission. We are, however, going to foster co-productions because we see this as a very valid way of not only bringing in overseas money to share the risk, and in turn to enable us to launch bigger budget films, but It also gives us the opportunity to bring in overseas star names to work alongside our own talent.

Are we talking in a strict, literal sense of co-productions organized via treaty?

Ideally for the obvious spin-off benefits, yes.

First of all, however, one must get the union situation straightened out. It is very important for artists, and for the union people here, to feel comfortable and feel they are not going to be ripped-off. Of course, the unions on the other side of the ocean have to be considered too. So a treaty is good in that regard, but we are

not saying that we need one before we can get into co-productions; and right now a lot of people overseas are putting together deals and approaching Australian producers. If the deal looks good and if the Australian equity is there in the co-production, then we are in­ terested. But the days are gone of people coming over and using Australia as a back-lot.

What sort of mix of finance, creative elements, talent, etc, would the Com­ mission be talking about?

We would look to a film that has both Australian elements and elements of the co-producing country. This would im­ mediately suggest, if we are doing a story that takes place say in Greece, continues in Australia and maybe goes back to Greece again, that the money would have to be shared between Greece and Australia. Now it might be 50-50, it might be 60-40, but that’s a detail.

It wouldn’t have to be 51-49 in favour of Australia . . .

No, indeed we might even go in as a minority. It might mean that an Australian writer and an Australian unit would look after the Australian shooting, and say the Italians or the French would look after their side of the production; the talent would be of at least equal number for each territory. We would certainly have a director directing the action close to our shores, while they might wish to have their own director elsewhere. Alter­ natively, we might do a package deal with an overseas producer where three or four films are made, and whereas their investment might predominate in one, because of the very story line and the locale, we in turn might predominate in the next. We are prepared to be flexible, but on balance there has to be an equity in creativity, in talent, and at the box­ office.

And would this idea of co-production apply equally well to foreign monies approaching Australian producers for filming partly here as for Australian producers approaching foreign money and filming partly overseas?

collateralization between film one, two and three.

So, we want to develop as much as possible the package concept because of this risk spreading across a number of films. On average you may get one or two that hopefully are going to put you in the black. I think if we don’t pursue this we are not going to finally convince the private sector, the businessman, that film is a viable and worthwhile investment field. We think the package the way that offers the best inducement for investors.

Overseas it has been proved the way to go. . ' What do you see as the major problems facing the industry, in general, and the individual, in particular, over the next few years?

Well, there is one major hurdle we have to overcome, and that is we have to expand the field of investment. So far we have had tremendous support from a handful of people who are, literally, carrying the industry with the Com­ mission. We have to expand that group and this is why we are looking àt packages, and co-productions. We’ve got to have more people involved in this industry because it needs a broader base. If we don’t broaden the base we will never have an industry. Indeed if the Commission really does its job, it should phase itself out of a job in, say, five years time.

Peter Martin was quoted in the press recently as suggesting that one of the problems for private investment incen­ tive in the industry was the structure of the Australian Income Tax Assessment Act in as far as it doesn’t provide any major incentives for individuals to invest in production. Do you therefore see the Commission taking an active part in lob­ bying for changes in the Act and in perhaps forcibly endeavouring to obtain MPDA member financing of local production?

Well, we would like anything to happen which would make investment more attractive in the film industry, so obvious­ ly we ought to get a tax structure that en­ courages people to invest. Now, I would say that if anybody is to put this proposi­ tion to Canberra the Commission would be the entity to do it. Such a decision hasn’t been taken yet, but we are looking at it.

So far as MPDA companies are con­ cerned we would like to see them in­ vesting and for all the good reasons. For example, there is a worldwide shortage of films at the moment and people who

are producing and putting money into Australian films today are not only mak­ ing good investments but if they are exhibitor-distributors they are producing good films for their own theatres. We are hoping that the MPDA members will do the right thing for the right reasons. At this point we don’t want to make threatening noises, because we don’t think an industry can be built that way.

I know there have been attempts in some territories to force people to in­ vest. In Korea, for example, they attempted to foster local production by making it a rule that overseas films could not be imported until a distributor produced a local film which gave him an import quota for five foreign films. But the films were so shoddy in quality that they had damaged their own industry.

I think local distributors who haven’t invested in Australian films are missing out on a golden opportunity.

The MPDA member companies that haven’t invested up to now have as much access to local industry trends as anybody else and have as much ability to see and be aware that films like “Pic­ nic At Hanging Rock” and “Caddie” are doing all the things that you said they are doing. One wonders if there can’t be other reasons for their failure to see the writing on the w all. . .

What you say is really true, but we are talking about what has happened in the last eight months. I would hope that by now these things have been driven home and maybe the penny is dropping in the boardrooms in Los Angeles and New York. If they have other reasons for not investing, I don’t know them, but I agree that on straight business logic they should be in it with their ears back.

Did the taking of a block of Australian films to Cannes work? The Canadians have always taken a block, but haven’t exactly set the world on fire. Is that a problem of the block concept or of the Canadian films?

The Canadian problem is that their films have been too institutionalized. The Canadian industry comes across as a government industry, whereas the AFC endeavours to present itself as a merchant bank funded by the Federal government working in conjunction with independent and private filmmakers. If you look at Picnic, Caddie,Fantasnvand Let The Balloon Go, you are looking at a series of privately conceived films, put together with independent production houses. ★

It has to be a two-way street.

You mentioned the concept of the package. How important is this concept going to be for Australian producers over the next few years? There has been a rumour about that Hexagon recently acquired some sort of ongoing package finance for a group of three or four films from the Film Commission. Is this the shape of things to come?

Well, let me put it this way: in general terms we are interested in the package concept from an investment point of view, because obviously you spread your risk. This would ideally involve cross

Title

Where Sold (at Cannes and after)

Mad Dog Picnic At Hanging Rock

U.S., Canada, Europe.

French Canada, English Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Portugal, Denmark, South Africa, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Israel.

Germany, France, Italy, Canada.

U.S., South Africa Britain, U.S. Britain, Italy.

Caddie Let the Balloon Go Fourth Wish Trespassers Devil’s Playground

Cinema Papers, September— 147

MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY FILM FESTIVALS 1976 When evaluating a film festival, one tends to balance out those films one likes against those one doesn’t. However, given a festival’s need to show films that would have d iffic u lty being seen otherwise, the real test, I suspect, is in the number of extraordinary or unusual films presented. This year, for me these films were Visconti’s L’lnnocente, Wender’s King of the Road and Wrong M o vem en t, M eszaros’ A d o p tio n , Doillon’s Les Doigts dans La Tete, and Wajda’s Land of Promise. For those films alone, both festivals should be con­ sidered successes.

Luchino Visconti’s. L’lnnocente is a masterpiece — not only a marvellous last film, but also one of his finest. Based on the novel by D’Annunzio, itself taken from the De Maupassant short story, The Confession, Visconti has created a superb psychological study of a man ‘above judgement’.

An aristocrat, Tullio Hermil (Giancarlo Giannini), is captivated by the cool, freeliving courtesan, Teresa (Jennifer O’Neill), and has a passionate liaison with her. But when forced back to his wife, Giuliana (Laura Antonelli), by the lover’s absence, Tullio finds his passion rekindled, especially after making love with her in their villa. When informed that Giuliana is pregnant, however, Tullio cannot reconcile his intellectual approval of her affair with his emotional disap­ pointment. Suggesting the child will separate them and destroy their love, he argues that Giuliana should abort. She refuses and Tullio takes it upon himself to find a solution. He leaves the newlyborn child on a window-sill to freeze, and the child dies (though independently of his action). Giuliana in turn spurns him and professes her love for the writer — now dead in Africa. Tullio takes the 'only choice’ and shoots himself in front of his mistress, who in the last shot of the film is seen scurrying away: “Teresa runs down the drive from the villa. In one hand, she holds up the skirt of her splendid evening gown. “ It is dawn.”1 in changing the original ending of the D'Annunzio novel, Visconti has revealed much about his approach to the subject.

D’Annunzio’s hero does not commit suicide because, as Visconti has said, "he was the embryo of his [D’Annunzio’s] superman type.” However, “a superman today fears neither the law of man nor God, and ends up killing himself.”

The film works on two main levels: the plot level, which is exciting and satisfying in itself, and the psychological study of motivation^The second is ultimately the more interesting and important because it raises the question of why Tuilio should play .with a child’s life as if it were a pawn in a grander scheme of things. It is not a question of Tullio being so crazed by jealousy that he uses the baby as a last resort, rather it is one of how calmly he intellectualizes his situation from a ‘lofted’ stance. Thus, Tulfio’s act is proof to himself that he can do such a thing and expect no scorn — no one, after all, has the right to judge him; he is above law, above man.

Interestingly, Visconti has for the first time (in the films I have seen) completely solved the problem of musical accom­ paniment. In nearly all his major films, Visconti has used the classical works of Bruckner, Verdi, Franck, Wagner, or Mahler, etc. Invariably this has not been successful (with the exception of the 1. From thè final script of L’Innocente, by S. Cecchi d’Amico, E. Medioli and L. Visconti.

148—Cinema Papers, September

»SiSI

Laura Antonelli as Giuliana in Luchino Visconti’s masterly study of a man “above judgement” , L’lnnocente.

Verdi waltz in The Leopard), the music lying uneasily alongside the image, flashing into sync at odd moments, but never for long. And this often led to the situation where, as in Senso, one piece of music finishes and within the same shot a new, tonally different piece begins. (The arrival at the gates of Verona is one such example.)

In L’lnnocente, however, the score by Franco Mannino (who also scored V isco n ti's e a rlie r B ellis s im a ) is marvellous, and complements the im­ ages to their fullest. As well, the score has been subtley mixed with natural sounds — for example, the way the sound of an encroaching storm is blend­ ed with discordant violins over the shot of Giuliana sitting by the fire.

The costumes, again by Piero Tosi, are positively beautiful. The excellence of his dresses could hardly go unnoticed, but his uniforms often do. In L’lnnocente, they are perfect, with each line crisp and unfussed.

Similarly, Visconti’s attention to decor is notable. The choice of wallpaper, cur­ tains and furnishings, augmented by constant arrays of roses, is careful and sumptuous.2The perfection of the image — its framing, its texture — creates an extremely powerful sense of the psy­ chological state in which the characters exist. In the fullest sense, Visconti’s characters are part of their environ­ ment.

comes screaming down the dead-end road and drives straight into the water. A man, Robert (Hanns Zischler), calmly climbs out of his sinking vehicle and wades ashore. Bruno offers him some clothes, and together they journey off.

Their adventures include a trip to Bruno’s childhood home on an island in the Rhine, which they row to in surreal moonlight; Robert wandering off to dis­ cover an irregular banging in the night only to find the survivor of a car crash throwing stones down a disused mine shute.

The most moving sequence, however, occurs when Robert goes to visit his father, a newspaper man in a sleepy, little village. Primarily he has returned to tell his father how poorly the old man treated his wife, and though he cannot verbalize these feelings, he stops his father from leaving.

The scene then changes to early mor­ ning, and the father is woken by the sound of the printing press. Robert gathers his few things and hands his father a newspaper containing all he has tried to say the evening before. He then kisses his father and leaves.

As a portrait of a broken father-son relationship, where both men dearly desire and need to love the other, it is quite unequalled in its simplicity and sensitivity.

Intercutting with this sequence is an equally magic encounter between Bruno and a cinema usher he meets at a village The only film that closely rivalled the fair and later seduces in the theatre.

Visconti was Wim Wender’s King of the Bruno and Robert re-unite and Road, but I cannot even begin to journey off to the frontier where they describe the magic of it. bunk down for the night in a shelter.

The film opens with Bruno (Rudiger Their relationship is now somewhat Vogler) shaving in the cabin of his pro­ strained and they lash into each other jectionist truck, beside the Elbe River. about their sexual tastes. Robert, with Suddenly, out of silence, a Volkswagen devastating accuracy, accuses Bruno of being “dead” because he doesn’t need or depend on anyone. Bruno replies by 2. The music room sequences, with the brilliant red wallpaper and roses, look, as suggesting that his companion probably one critic has commented, as if Visconti was sounds like a “ badly dubbed skin-flic” showing us how he would have made when he makes love. Next morning Proust.

Robert is gone and Bruno finds a note on

the door: “ Everything must change.”

The scene cuts to Robert at the station awaiting a train. Once on it, there is a two-shot of Robert and the window, into the corner of which comes Bruno’s truck.

Both vehicles then merge at a railway crossing, and as the train passes Robert mutters to himself: “ Don’t think I didn't see you Kamikaze.”

The greatness of the film, apart from the honesty of its vision, is that the spell invoked by the opening is unbroken right through till the end where Wenders finishes with a delightfully tongue-in­ cheek joke. After having ripped up his schedule, and taken heed of Robert's ad­ vice, the camera leaves Bruno and tilts up to the neon sign on the front of a cinema. Most of the letters are broken and all that are left glowing are END. Around the corner, are the initials of the cinema, WW. It is difficult to pinpoint what creates the magic of King of the Road — the music is perfect, so is the photography, and the acting, etc. But, above all else, if the term genius is to be levelled at anyone today, it surely must be Wenders.

As for Wender’s Wrong Movement, it was almost as good. This time, Rudiger Vogler’s journey across Germany is with the company of several strange travellers: an ex-Nazi, a dumb juggler, am actress and a melancholy poet. In place of the silences and spare looks of King of the Road, however, Wenders has employed a wordy script from novelist Peter Handke (who also scripted his Goalkeeper’s Fear of Penalty). This is not always to advantage, but when given the chance, the visuals create so powerful a mood that all m inor failures are somehow irrelevant. For instance, how can one express the joy one feels when watching that incredible sequence on the train when the briefly glimpsed actress is seen disappearing on another? Then, as soon as we rest confident that the scene has ended, ‘our’ train comes to a halt and reverses Its direction.

MELBOURNE/SYDNEY FESTIVALS

Some of the sequences were too literary, especially those in the castle, but the num ber of those which were marvellous was overwhelming: the walk up the road, the tracking shots through the city, the climatic scene on the moun­ tain when Rudiger reveals that every step we take is a wrong movement away from that goal to which we keep hoping to reach. A beautiful, poetic film and ample evidence of Wenders’ talents.

Bertrand Tavernier’s The Judge and the Assassin is brilliantly scripted, es­ pecially early on, but very poorly directed.

The film tells of a battle between a very typical, bourgeois French magistrate and a tramp suspected of murdering young girls. The magistrate (Philippe Noiret) looks upon the case as a chance to prove his intellectual superiority, and hence trick the wily vagrant into a con­ fession. Their duel is often very exciting and contains many inventive dialogues, but it comes to no climax. Instead, Taver­ nier opts for a political conclusion and points out that thousands of children died in the mines while the law/establishment cared only for reeking revenge on a solitary wrongdoer. This is fair enough, but it is unsatisfying dramatically.

Tavernier: “ My film is an affront on two kinds of violence: a mad, destructive, un­ c o n tro lla b le one u n co n scio u sly provoked, and a legal, repressive, hidden one emanating from the courts, asylums, hospitals where the unfortunate are ‘treated’, medical experiments, assassinations committed in the fac­ tories." Consequently, the title is ironic and could read “The Judge — both Judge and Assassin!”

An extremely interesting issue raised in Jean Aurenche’s script is the tramp’s fascination with Joan of Arc. This suggests a parallel with Gilles de Rais,3 and rather firmly places the story within the collective French consciousness — and not merely dismiss it as an odd or unusual occurrence. This link is also s tre n g th e n e d by the n u m e ro u s references to and from Octave Mirbeau’s works, in particular Garden of Tortures.

Given this richness of scripting, why is the film ultimately so barren? The blame appears to lie with Tavernier whose whole concept of direction is an attempt to put Zola’s maxim, “that one must live indignant", into practice. Nearly every scene is mistimed or uneven, and effect takes precedence over dramatic unity.

And where Tavernier does go for style he fails — for example, the bad period reconstructions, and his attempts at “gliding” the camera through the moun­ tains. The idea was good, but the moun­ tain breezes are so strong that the resul­ tant images are very bumpy.

A much more successful film on a similar theme is Christine Lipinska’s Je Suis Pierre Riviere.

In Land of Promise, Andrzej Wajda has created the cinematic equivalent of Dicken’s Coketown. His turn of the cen­ tury city of Lodz is a mass of sprawling, angry slums, and gargantuan mills con­ trolled by a sinister collection of Jews, Germans and Poles. Never has the ugliness or cruelty of a city been so powerfully portrayed, a city where being inhuman is the ticket to survival; from the snivelling money-lenders to the deprav­ ed industrialists who drag innocents from the factory floors for their own perverse pleasure.

Part of Wajda’s genius in creating this cesspool is his controlled use of the wide-angle lens. For example, the track­ ing shot through the slums as' the camera sways from side to side. The most dramatic use, however, is in the final se­ quence when a rock crashes through the board-room window and lies spinning in front of the camera amid a scatter of broken glass. Wajda cuts briefly away to the outraged reaction among the 3. Gilles de Rais was Marshall of France and probably its wealthiest citizen. He Idealized Joan of Arc and fought by her side at the Siege of Orleans. Several years after her ex­ ecution, however, he was arrested for murdering 240 young boys and girls.

Bruno (Rudiger Vogler) and Robert (Hanns Zischler) after Robert has bid farewell to his father. Wim Wender’s magical King of the Road.

gathered mill owners, and then back to the rock — still spinning.

Never has the inexorable need for protest been so strongly visualized. And, in spite of the oppressiveness of the scene, especially in the low-angle shot of Daniel Olbrychski striding back into the board-room to order the guards to shoot, there is a sense of a great hope. The volcano will surely soon erupt.

Claude Sautet’s Vincent, Francois, Paul et les Autres was notable for its sympathetic portrait of the business dif­ ficulties of an engineer, Vincent (Yves Montand). Each new difficulty is met with an anguish we easily understand, and his last-bid meeting with his ex-wife (Stephane Audran) is extremely moving.

There Is an unspoken bond between them, that of two people who know each other too well — though Vincent tends to deceive himself about this. The resigna­ tion and sadness of Audran’s face momentarily sparks this otherwise placid film to life, and although she has only a minor part, she completely steals the show.

The other characters — and there are many, including Francois (Michel Pic­ coli), a doctor who is having problems with his wife, and Paul (Serge Reggiani) the stagnated writer — all failed to in­ volve me. However, Jean Boffety’s erratic but pastel photography and Philippe Sarde’s nicely melodic score (as in Souvenirs d’en France) make the film at least pleasant entertainment. It is an­ noying, though, that Sautet still feels bound to over-fragment his plots, almost as if he is trying to prove that the New Wave didn’t leave him behind.

Krzysztof Zanussi’s The Balance was disappointing, both as a film and as a continuation of the style unsuccessfully adopted by him for his earlier film, Illumination. In The Balance, Zanussi has created a confusion of editing and plot development, and has integrated the worst of influences from his U.S. ex­ perience (The Catamount Killing) — a lush and sentimental music score. This stylistic frenzy is, I feel, quite at tension with Zanussi’s essentially slow-moving and subtle humanism.

The tramp pauses by a Christ In the mountains after having murdered a young shepherdess.

Bertrand Tavernier's The Judge and the Assassin.

Cinema Papers, September—149

MELBOURNE/SYDN EY I I S I IVAES

The best example of this tension is the scene where Marta is trampolining at the sports centre with her lover. With her, one senses that for the first time she can see the possibility of a freedom apart from her husband. Though she later re­ jects this, it is still a moment of great joy.

Consequently, Marta trampolines higher and higher without fear, her face radiant with happiness.

A static medium-shot (with tilts) could have covered this perfectly. Instead, Zanussi cuts at least 30 times, each shot lasting less than a second and having no unity with the next. A trite score also plays remorselessly. Sadly, all exhilara­ tion is lost, and a moment of great audience empathy and understanding is turned into one of alienation. Similarly at the end with Marta's return to her husband. Maja Komoroswka’s acting is breathtaking, and the scene is potentially one of great emotion, but again all feeling is destroyed by the music score.

Zanussi is a great film director — one need only remember his Structure of Crystals, Family Life or Behind the Wall — and it is to be hoped he can resolve this stylistic contradiction in his work.

Lautaro Murua’s Little Raoul, in spite of a tendency to over-stress certain issues, is a sensitive depiction of an orphan’s struggle to avoid detention. Her relationship with the news vendor is very moving, particularly in the scene where he — as he inevitably had to — makes a sexual demand of her. Their arrange­ ment turns sour, not out of anger, but out of disappointment that he could not avoid doing what he knew would hurt her.

Raoul’s flight from the city ends in a descent into fear — an over-wrought, step-by-step collapse on a beach. What does work well though is her accidental discovery of the excessively grand beach houses of the rich. The contrast with the slums she lives in is obvious, but because it is left unstressed (there has been no reference to slums in the preceding hour) it is very effective, cer­ tainly one of the saddest statements on the mis-distribution of wealth I have seen.

Marco Bellocchio's Victory March starts brilliantly: the young soldier, Passeri, marches away from his platoon, turns, screams out his name, turns and marches on to repeat the action again every 10 feet. The insane, rigid discipline of the army is beautifully conveyed and it is really only a question of how long Passeri’s defiance will last.

Intentionally or otherwise, the film breaks down into three acts, the first of which concentrates on Passeri’s futile attempts to get himself discharged. This is easily the most effective. But once Captain Ascuitto (Franco Nero) has beaten him "into shape” , including Passeri’s acceptance of a subservient role which involves spying on the Cap­ tain’s wife, the film tends to disintegrate.

This is strange as it is the section that clearly interested Bellocchio most, for it develops the one positive relationship in the film — that of Passeri and the Cap­ tain’s wife. A beautiful, unspoken under­ standing develops between them, but ironically it is this relationship that leads to destruction.

The ending is rather melodramatic and unsatisfying, and we are left with a curious failure of a film. So, although Vic­ tory March has its moments, It is still a long way short of the standard set by La

themselves. For example, I suspect most viewers get as much from Monika’s outfit on the night of the dance, complete with black bag and gold chain, as from the ex­ tensiveness of the opening.

Once Monika joins Berit at the nightclub, however, the film works beautifully, blending humour and pathos as they sit waiting for an approach, only to be disappointed when it comes.

Monika leaves with a man, but in the morning misinterprets his gestures of affection and he leaves. Then, very cleverly, Bjorkman reverses the first shot of the film, this time making comments within the shot by references back. For example, in the first she checks the fish bowl, while in the last it lies shattered on the floor. This is where Bjorkman the film critic is evident. The ending is also very effective — Monika dissolving into the sterile white wall behind her.

Satyajit Ray’s The Middleman was for me a decided improvement on his last festival entry, Distant Thunder. Here, the story of a young man’s corruption into the world of business is done with great delicacy and humour. And even when Ray strives for the blackest of satire, the human-ness of the characters is what comes through.

The best scene, in fact, is when Somnath’s friend instructs him in the art of business management. Though we are hardly asked to agree with his attitude, he is the most loveable of rogues. And that is probably Ray's greatness. Often I have felt it is the small touches, those gentle glances aside to human foibles, that make his best films work.

Where the film does pall is in the over­ extended build-up to a climax everyone knows is coming. The film is also hampered by extremely poor black and white processing.

The actress, the melancholy poet and the traveller from Wonder’s Wrong Movement.

Contrary to most, I found Jean-Jac­ ques Andrien’s The Son of Amir is Dead quite rivetting. The film opens with a dazzling pick-pocket sequence on a sub­ way train, a voice-over describing what is or should be happening, though we see nothing that matches this explanation. Is Pierre a liar or just a lover of Bressor films?

The journey to Tunisia, to look for the relatives of his ‘dead’ partner in crime, is both naturalistic and lyrical. The almost motionless life-style there overcomes him as much as it does us, and Pierre finds that the ready answers he was hop­ ing for are not to be found. Only the graves of those killed in the French-AIgerlan war have any meaning.

Paul (Serge Reggiani), the stagnated writer, and Francois (Michel Piccoli), the doctor with marital problems, in Claude Sautet’s Vincent, Francois, Paul et les Autres.

Cina e Vicina.

Stig Bjorkman’s The White Wall has a good performance by Harriet Anderson, and a brilliant one by Lena Nyman, but as a whole it lacks involvement. This is part­ ly due to Bjorkman’s endless setting of scene at the beginning. To convey the sterility of Monika’s widowed life, he shows her waking up, preparing her child for school, suffering the inevitable en­ counter with the lover and disinterestedly tidying up afterwards.

All this could have been established in 10 m inutes, rather than 40, but Bjorkman, like many filmmakers, feels the need to stress points which audiences can easily discern for 150—Cinema Papers, September

The German, Max Baum (Andrzej Seweryn), after the fire that has destroyed his mill. Andrzej Wajda’s explosive Land of Promise.

MHLBOURNE/SYDNEY FESTIVALS

only dilutes and debases the indigenous legends, but also strands the film in a stylistic no-man’s-land. (Another recent example is Kurosawa’s unfortunate Dersu Uzala, an American-style film made in the Soviet Union by a Japanese director.)

Theodor Angelopoulos’ O Thiassos is mannerism gone mad, the camera in­ anely moving across a landscape of sporadic interest. With staggering regularity, the camera comes to a halt, tilts or pans on to an empty space and then films this emptiness while the actors scramble off-screen to regain their new positions and once again enter at funeral pace. U ndoubtedly A nge lop ou los’ changes of period within a single shot are very clever — though his period design is often inaccurate — but all sub­ tlety ends there.

One example of the superficial level at which Angelopoulos tends to operate is the marriage between the Greek girl and the American soldier. To suggest that the influx of American ‘culture’ is destroying Greek traditions, Angelopoulos has a piece of American jazz drown out the traditional Greek wedding song.

The young lovers, Anna and Sandor, in Marta Meszaros' beautiful Hungarian film, Adoption.

i had been looking forw ard to Walerian Borowczyk’s Story of Sin, but it started only 10 minutes after the Visconti and I continually found myself drifting back into the world of L’lnnocente. What I did manage to assimilate, however, suggested that Borowczyk’s spark of wit, or audacity, is losing its direction, and his incessant cutting to mechanical gadgets has merely become dull. The ending also' failed to come together, and what could have been a moment of great emotion simply trailed off disinterestedly.

The film did c o n ta in s e v e ra l breathtakingly clever moments though, and the seduction of the nobleman — with the ingenious theft of the letters — is a scene of comic genius.

Scene from Borowczyk’s occasionally brilliant Story of Sin.

Ettore and his wealthy girlfriend in Guilio Paradisi’s erratic Slum Boy.

Nico Naldini’s Fascista was a two-hour documentary record of the rise of Fascism in Italy from October 24, 1922, to June 10, 1940. Compiled from old newsreels, it naturally concentrates on Mussolini and^his regime, but contains magnificent footage of, for example, Hitler’s visit in 1934. On that occasion the demonstrations of gymnastics and weaponry rival those in Riefenstahl’s Olympia. Unfortunately, the film had only a brief English commentary and the newsreel footage, including all of Mussolini's speeches, was in Italian and unsubtitled. Consequently, the majority of the film was, to me, largely in­ comprehensible. But the power of the images, especially those of the bravura gesturing of Mussolini, did manage to compensate for the lack of translation and at the same time hold one’s interest.

Bahram Beiza’i’s The Stranger and The Fog is essentially over-directed melodrama. It takes the old theme of a stranger entering a peaceful outback town and by his very presence indirectly reeking havoc, but atte m p ts no variations on it. Instead, Bahram Beiza’i seems intent on incorporating as many foreign influences as possible into the traditional folk-lore of Iran.

The influence of Kurosawa is very evident, especially with the peasants dashing around, weapon in hand, screaming at full lung. But this energetic madness effectively destroys the final confrontation, because aii tension and drama has been well wrung dry by then.

Believability is also breached by the ‘model’ in the lead — she is totally uncon­ vincing as a peasant.

However, it is the interweaving of cultures that is most disturbing, as it not

Nana Mcheiidze's The First Swallow is a gently humorous tale of a Georgian soccer team’s rise to local prominence and ultimate defeat at the hands of some British sailors. The matches were energetically shot, though the editing oc­ casionally made things confusing. The touch of romance is nicely handled, as is the single-mindedness of the players and the troubles this attitude causes them.

The main problem with the film is its direction — it never gives one confidence that the direction one is travelling in is the correct one. This is particularly evident in the final shot of the film, where, after the players have stopped at the water's edge, the camera cranes upwards, tilting down uneasily to compensate the framing. Once at the top though, it cranes down again as if to prove the pointlessness of the entire shot.

Giulio Paradisi’s Slum Boy was a curious hybrid of styles, and as a result didn’t really quite jell. There are many good moments (particularly in the relationship of the boy and his girlfriend; and the robbing of the office-cabinet), but the pace is erratic and the ending, like in Story of Sin, lacks any kind of punch, the irony well and truly lost.

I found Peter Refn’s Violets are Blue slightly disappointing. This light-hearted look at a break-up between a woman bent on liberation and a man unable to cope with it, manages to entertain, but the plot often skates perilously thin.

With Wives, however, it is almost unique in its use of humour in the face of mounting demagoguery.

One scene that works particularly well is the long argument at the end, though the subsequent suicide of the lover is merely pointless. The lesbian sequences also verge on silliness, but here the mis­ calculation is to have not taken them seriously enough. As they are, they are too off-hand and tend to look the stan­ dard fare of the Scandinavian skin-flick, which I am sure was not Refn’s intention.

Per Blom’s Mother’s House suffered from not exploiting the obviousness of its ending and the film merely plods along with Petter as he stumbles towards his inevitable fate.

So, when he finally seduced his mother, the audience cheered — it would have been difficult for them to have reacted differently. The long, meaningful looks simply took their toll; a pity as the film starts well with the arrival in town and the girl’s disappearance into the night, her taxi like a reticent glow-worm.

I disliked strongly Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beauties. It is a silly, vulgar film, over-wrought and devoid of directional strength. It is also, I suggest, time that such wallowing in the atrocities of World War 2 be given a rest. After all it is 31 years and several hundreds of anti-war films ago. ^ Cinema Papers, September— 151

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FIFTH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF FANTASTIQUE AND SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA Velina Glaessner

The Fifth International Festival of Fan­ tastique and Science Fiction films was held last April in Paris. It took place for the second year running in the enormous and prestigious, if a mite anonymous, auditorium of the Centre International before a vast and enthusiastically iconoclastic audience. (Previously the festival was housed in a small neighbour-, hood cinema.)

Some 30 features were shown, about 20 of these in competition with the rest spread over a mini-Japanese retrospec­ tive, a series of information screenings and a hom age to the A m erican producer/director Dan Curtis around whom a very Gallic cult is currently collecting. The festival which has grown very much from a fan celebration, aims to present something of a panorama of recent production and sees itself acting as a springboard to the further distribu­ tion of those films it champions in France.

None of the competition films had been shown in France before, and rather surprisingly to anyone who finds U.S. television series inescapable, neither had such television episodes as The Norliss Tapes, which made up a fairly sizeable chunk of the program. In fact, given the obviously sizeable potential audience and the welcome seriousness and interest French critics tend to display towards this area of cinema, as opposed to the general disdain in which it is held by their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, the apparent ineptness of local distributors comes as a surprise.

In a way, the development of this festival would seem to presage what currently looks like becoming a massive rebirth of interest in the area of science fiction and fantasy cinema. Or, at least, a m assive a tte m p t on the part of Hollywood to mine an area opened up by the disaster syndrome. Science fiction, for instance, a genre notorious (one or two exceptions apart) for coping on and even thriving on shoestring budgets, is becoming eminently bankable in a way unthinkable even five years ago. And for the sixth festival, Schlockoff already has secured George Lucas' Star Wars, Guy H a m ilto n ’ s S u p e r m a n , S te ve n Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Donald Cammell’s Demon Seed.

If this year’s “ panorama” was a little patchy—the festival was as heavily bias­ ed towards U.S. and British products as in previous years, though all were shown in their original, unsubtitled versions — it nevertheless afforded a welcome oppor­ tunity to reflect on current interpretation of some classic themes in fantasy cinema, as well as drawing attention to a handful of films of uncompromising brilliance, films which would also, one would have thought, have rewarded dis­ tribution. Chief among these, and a film that fairly outshone everything else shown, was Messiah of Evil directed and produced by the scriptwriting team of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. The film was first shown at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival under the title (not half as good) of The Second Coming and unaccoun­ tably, casually dismissed by its Variety reviewer, thereafter sinking without trace.

Opposite page: Michio Yamamoto’s The Lake of Dracuia.

The Messiah of Evil reworks the classic theme of the intrusion of an inno­ cent party into a small town that is dis­ covered to be in the grip of a malignant infection. Here, the infection is a physical one and the intruding protagonist, a woman, Arletty (Marianna Hill), who arrives in Point Dune — “ Deader than hell” warns a lugubrious gas station attendant — to discover what has happened to her artist father whose letters have inexplicably ceased. She finds the town disturbing and discovers her father has mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind only a houseful of haun­ tingly bleak, modernist murals (brilliantly integrated by the directors with the loca­ tion sequences) and a diary of literal, physical disintegration.

Messiah of Evil does everything right.

Opening with a scene in which notions of shelter and safety are shattered by a gratuitous and unexplained killing, the film then launches dramatically into an in te rio r m onologue of sh ocking directness which it plays off against a nightmarish, distorted shot of a corridor in a mental home (shades of Fuller’s Shock Corridor) and which announces the classic concerns of the film — “They won’t believe me!” a woman’s voice cries — and the film’s graphic deviation from them. Huyck and Katz meticulously sever the woman’s lifelines one by one until the horror she deciphers in the pages of her father's diary gradually melds indistinguishably with her own ex­ perience.

The suspense is there from the beginning and tightened expertly, and the details by which the psychic corrup­ tion becomes manifest (the reddening moon — “They’re moonlightin’,” as one character remarks of a group of zombie­ like local residents staring fixedly at the moon with a Carrol-like sense of the dis­ concerting quality of language used slightly askew; the gradual loss of physical sensation in the body, the un­ quenchable bleeding from the orifices, the lust for blood) are presented with a seriousness and understatement that leaves the film unforgettably in the mind.

The most horrific sequences — one shot, without distortion, in the almost deserted supermarket in which Arletty attempts to take refuge, the other in a cinema which gradually and sinisterly fills around our unconscious protagonist — are models in the mining of the ordinary and every­ day to horrific effect. Wisely, the scriptwriters play with a nub of anxiety and alienation without attempting to offer any explicit explanation, while setting the whole within a society turning, with in­ cestuous single-mindedness, in upon itself.

Cinematically literate, the film ’s reference points include as well as Fuller, Antonioni and Cammell-Roeg’s Perfor­ mance. Visually faultless, Messiah of Evil uses classic techniques of displacement to play on fear and anxiety, and at the same time manages to re-invigorate them in a startlingly inventive way. One eagerly awaits further films from Katz and Huyck.

If the already widely shown Death Race 2000, which took the prize this year, works best as an extended and effective black gag, the same director Paul

The major prize-winner at the festival, Paul Bartel's Death Race 2000.

Kenji Misumi’s Baby Cart at the River Styx. Itto disposes of an adversary whose severed artery spouts blood as if from a,fountain.

Bartel’s Private Parts, even in the heavily censored version shown in the festival, proved something of a revelation. The film pulls a notable coup by hingeing its plot on the simple, rather Hitchcockian ploy of having its protagonist slip via her personal obsession of voyeurism, an obsession which by definition we the cinema audience share, through a kind of looking glass into what might seem a peeper’s paradise — a seedy residential hotel full of quaintly weird clients — but which turns out to be a multi-layered trap in which finally the spier herself is spied on. Bartel shows he is able,to handle both scenes of everyday directness, such as the introductory sequence in which Cheryl is caught secretly observing her room-mate make love with its direct, un­ acted feel about it, as well as those aspects of the film which impinge

allusively on the world of the Frankens­ tein myth. , The ‘monster’ of this particular fable -proves to be the h erm a ph rod itic photographer George, a ‘creature’ deprived of normal parenthood and childhood who makes a living selling photographs to The Prying Eye and who Bartel creates as a character of quite tragic dimensions.

Kenji Misumi’s Baby Cart at the River Styx was notable for an intense single­ m in de d ne ss d is tille d even m ore relentlessly away from any possibility of digression. The film is another episode in the continuing popular Japanese series devoted to the exploits of the samurai, Itto (or the Wolf), and his infant son, Diagoro (hence the “ baby cart” or pram of the title). A wonderfully monolithic and uncompromising film, it carries Itto’s inCinema Papers, September— 153

PARIS SCl-FI FESTIVAL

Terror at Red Wolf Inn.

tentness and virtual wordlessness into its tenderness, as the child, framed between structure. Exposition is kept to a bare the two naked bodies, tentatively brushes a drop of water from first his minimum.

The film follows Itto and his son’s father’s chest and then from the woman’s progress through a feudal Japan torn by breast, as Misumi’s wandering camera unexplained clan feuds, a world our reveals, halting the secret (and almost in­ characters enter and leave at the same voluntarily) movement of her hand measured pace. Itto’s motivation is ex­ towards the sword hilt behind her on the plained as mercenary, yet he seems ground.

Misumi’s film is full of sweeping a lm ost beyond need of money.

Tomisaburo Wakayama’s superb in­ movements, the curves of swords, of carnation of the character, in a per­ arms raised with weapon In hand, of formance that has no recourse to the curves of blood escaping from arteries. personalities of a Mifune, is unrelentingly Although not in an obvious sense explor­ stark with the monolithic quality of the ing the fantastic, Baby Cart at the River film as a whole. Intriguingly, the film Styx, is nonetheless permeated by an shares with King Hu’s The Valiant Ones, overriding sense of the surreal. Its sheer obsessive singlemindedness makes it a a central motif of hidden danger.

There is an extraordinary sequence in remarkable work. which one mercenary rakes from the concealing sand the scalps of his still liv­ If somewhat short of my expectations, ing would-be ambushers. Also, Misumi’s Devil Crows, produced by the Hong visual style is often fascinatingly close to Kong Eng Wah company and directed by Hu’s in its use of superimpositions, rapid Wong Sing Loy, certainly proved to be cutting in action sequences, shots of one of the most effective films in the sunlight glinting off swords, of bare festival. Devil Crows is a kind of Chinese hands stopping blades. His fight scenes, reply to The Birds. About a village when not relishing their physical over­ terrorised by a flock of deadly crows, it is statement (with feet severed at the ankle distinguished by the conviction with by way of the Boadicea-like knife blades which it suggests the psychic terrors that extruding from the 'baby cart’s’ axles, or underlie folk-lore. Pains are taken to severed limbs raining to the ground), separate the unnaturalness of the carry much of the allusiveness of Hu’s in behaviour of the crows from the their almost abstract rushes of action behaviour of normal birds, and, as shot in fragmented close-up and dazzl­ attempts to ward off attacks fail, Wong ing long-shot.

Sing Loy builds a sense of all-engulfing The stylistic similarity is all the more and apocalyptic panic which he remarkable given the huge distance that sc ru p u lo u s ly fram es w ithin the separates the consciousness of the films parameters of folk and legend. The tone of these two directors. Misumi’s doesn't of the whole gathers something of the touch Hu’s at all, Misumi calculatedly physical excessiveness of a Russian folk dodging all notions of development or tale. In confusion, the village sends for a progression — Itto leaves ‘the stage’ ex­ neighbourhood bird catcher, a character actly as he entered it;vvcharacters’ the film constructs with some delicacy, a speeches often have a mohologue-like man whose skills are “just ordinary ones quality asking no response. Fd{ example, at their maximum”, yet who is able to en­ a man falls dying, blood escaping in a compass somehow the spirits of the fountain from his severed artery, yet his animals he has caught and killed. As his words describe his delight in the^sound usual methods fail and flamboyant dis­ of blood—“ like the wind” when a head is plays of fearlessness cave in, Buddhist severed from a neck — and his only ritual and belief is mobilised to counter reservation is “a pity this time it had to.be the impotence of superstition. The my own”; \, background to the attack, the legacy of a Misumi punctuates his tale with h failed revolt, the ambiguousness'of the number of short sequences which, b y \ bird itself which its victims describe as “a contrast, glow with a beguiling Intimacy: \ man looking like a crowd” (though what the samurai bathing with his son, or the we see on the screen is a bird), and the shot of the two of them seated silent gaz­ sense of evil also lurking within the ing into the dying flames of a fire. Or, village itself (in the persons of the most strange of all, and a sequence that \ money-grubbing apothecary and his seems to encapsulate something of the assistants), effectively describe a sense strange distinctiveness of the* film, the of both cosmic and gut-level struggle scene where, after escaping from a between good and evil. b urnin g ship, Itto and D iagoro My main reservation concerns the un­ seek shelter In a hut only to discover a derscoring of the virtues of the drum­ woman survivor there before them. As banging (literally) leader/liberator, a she cowers in terror Itto attacks her, tear­ theme attached as well to the aspect of ing the clothes from her body. However, the plot dealing with the crows, for they the scene ends, not with the expected also are revealed to have a leader. (To brutal rape, but with Itto undressing and free the village it Is only necessary to seating himself close to her, with the defeat the leader and the rest of the birds child, also naked, placed between them will return to normal.) The film also for warmth. The sequence is allowed to boasts a genuine horrifying denouement develop sideways, as It were, to of rather post-Exorcist possession In. 154—Cinema Papers, September

Devil Crows, a kind of Chinese reply to The Birds.

which the actor’s ability as a contortionist provides a core of unmistakeable horror.

The film has moments of great visual power as the camera pursues the sinisterty scurrying form of the wounded bird, or quietly catches the crow's shadow falling over a room, and there is an acutely tuned performance from Sing Chu as the bird-catcher.

shown scampering up an invisible path skywards at one point). And the explana­ tion for the whole event and for Dracula’s residence in Japan — a descendent of Dracula learning of his appalling heritage buries himself in darkest Japan only to find his son reverting to type spurred on by unrequited love for a child — has a certain poetic irony,

The screening of this Hong Kong Chinese film alongside Shaw Brothers Toho-scene The Super Infra Man (directed by Hua Shen) confirmed suspicions that the richest vein of Chinese cinema comes from those films which take some trouble to anchor themselves firmly within Chinese culture.

It Is surely a retrograde step to give any stamp of approval to films like this, for they, given the studio dominated produc­ tion situation in Hong Kong, effectively s tra it-ja c k e t d irectors capable of much more Interesting work. Devil Crows, on the other hand, which reduced an initially hooting audience (taken aback by the Chinese ballad that in­ troduced the film) to attentive and horrified silence and gave me, for one, a highly disturbed night, may well'prove a commercially viable proposition.

A retrospective screening of Goke Body Snatcher From Hell was only saved

To stay with the East for a moment, the Japanese The Lake of Dracula, directed

by Michio Yamamoto, proved a good deal less interesting than it had sounded, although it finally did yield up a satisfyingly gory, death which more or iess placated an impatient audience. The film, about a woman traumatised by an encounter with Dracula at the age of five, suffers from some rather laborious psychoiogising. Nevertheless, the flashback to the child with her pet dog being led on by an unseen force towards the fatal house is effective enough (the dog is

from utter dullness by the mask-llke features of Hideo Ko as the killer-victim penetrated by an ectoplasm-llke sub­ stance through a suggestively labial opening that appears in his forehead.

The heavily emphasised references to Japan’s nuclear history (newsreel footage, etc.) would have been better left at the level of suggestion, rather than be­ ing indulgently deployed in lieu, it seems, of the director being able to work up much excitement by any other means.

In this context, a fairly solid selection of British horror films, which Included Freddie Francis’ well nigh faultless The Creeping Flesh and Kevin Connor’s From Beyond the Grave, a witty and even inspired foray into the omnibus film, Im­ pressed with the sheer confidence with which the arena circumscribing the central struggle of good and evil (which the film articulates) is drawn, and the cumulative power of their mise en scene.

There was also a late night screening, by way of tribute, of Seth Holt’s The Nanny, a film that grows decisively in stature with each viewing, in spite of its concluding descent into melodrama, and which offers surely the Iciest ever dissection of British middle-class family life.

Continued on P. 165

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RESTRICTIVE TRACE PRACTICES LEGISLATION AND THE FILM INDUSTRY: A POSTSCRIPT DR A MAJOR REFORM?

by Ransom Stoddard In a two-part series published in Cinema Papers — issues five and six — contributing editor Antony I. Ginnane examined the ex­ hibition-distribution status quo and, in the light of the Tariff Board and the Trade Practices Act, made some tentative recommendations for reform, drawing on both the U.S. and British ex­ perience.

On June 29, 1976, a single commissioner of the Trade Practices Commission, Dr Venturini, rejected an application by the Motion Picture Distributors Association (a trade association of major American importers) for clearance under the provisions of the Act of the standard form of film hire contract between exhibitors and dis­ tributors which operate by convention in Vic­ toria, Tasmania and South Australia. (This standard form of contract has been a continuing source of frustration and business difficulty for independent exhibitors, weighted as it is heavily in favour of the distributor).

Dr Venturini also rejected a clearance applica­ tion for certain schemes for circuiting films and checking theatres, as well as the “payment of film hire in advance scheme” which the MPDA appropriately use to suppress the incidence of bad debtors in the industry and to inappropriate­ ly restrain bona fide, negotiation and argument between distributor members and independent exhibitors.

In refusing clearance, the Commissioner issued a 92-page judgement which effectively turned the glare of the spotlight on a host of monopolistic and anti-competitive practices con­ sistently indulged in by the MPDA. The trade response to the decision was as might be expected. The solicitors for MPDA, in a series of telexes and memoranda to the Com­ mission, attempted to convince the Commission into taking what would have been an un­ precedented course of action, namely to suppress the placement of the decision on the public register. MPDA solicitors appeared to object to the fact that Dr Venturini’s examination of the clearances applications was as detailed and com­ plete as it was. Beneath a veiled suggestion that the Commission was conducting a witch-hunt into the film distribution industry, they claimed that irrelevant matters were taken into con­ sideration in making the judgement; and that an undertaking given them by members of the Commission’s staff, namely that no decision would be made Without the MPDA being given further opportunity to place submissions before the Commission, had been breached.

At the same time, a series of press releases and letters to the editor emanated from the MPDA, attempting on the one hand to criticize Dr Venturini’s decision, and on the other to suggest that the standard form of contract was in fact a desired method of trading by both ex­ hibitors and distributors.

156—Cinema Papers, September

Predictably, the trade paper Australian Cinema, the official organ of the Exhibitor’s Associations, backed the MPDA claim. Many independent exhibitors, however, are of the belief that both this paper and the organization that purports to represent them are merely fronts for the vertically integrated exhibition and distribution combines that back it. In follow up letters to the financial press, prominent indepen­ dent exhibitors, Philip Doyle and Jack Payne, both of whom had many disagreements with the MPDA, put the matter in a different perspec­ tive.

The Commission appeared to temporarily bow to the MPDA by agreeing to allow Dr Ven­ turini’s ruling to be reviewed by the Full Bench of the Commission within two to three weeks of issuing the original decision.

Australian film producers should note that the current resurgence of interest in financing local production has been by distributors who are not members of the MPDA, (namely BEF, Roadshow and Filmways). It is now almost trite to note the millions of dollars exported annually from Australia by MPDA members, a mere token of which has been reinvested in local production. The writing is on the wall for CIC, MGM, United Artists, 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers; and Columbia’s recent minor involvement in Barney scarcely exonerates it.

Cinema Papers reprints sections of the Com­ mission decision: (i) Early on in the decision Dr Venturini sum­ marizes the rationales advanced for various exclusionary practices existent in the distribution-exhibition duopoly.

11. The State of the Film Industry Cinemas differ greatly in size, amenity, location and ‘drawing power’ in general. Film producers and dis­ tributors, with expensive investments to recoup, are naturally going to see that their best pictures are shown to advantage and they are selective about their customers. The usual practice is to seek an important cinema for the first-run of a big picture in a given area; the public will, of course, pay higher prices to see it while it is new than later on. Lesser cinemas will be offered the picture for second — or subsequent runs, so as to give the public a greater incentive to pay a higher admission charge to see it early on; in turn, the cinemas showing the first-run will pay a larger fee than those showing later-runs. There is a pedantic sense in which this procedure is in itself ‘monopolistic’, for the first-run of a picture is a natural monopoly. It stands to reason that the producer of a picture is entitled to try to max­ imise his profits by normal commercial methods, and it is clear that this method obtains more revenue than would one in which the picture was released simultaneously to all the cinemas that wanted it. In any gase, only a limited number of copies of a film can be made if prohibitive expense is to be avoided.

At the same time the structure of the industry is one which lends itself to exclusionary practices. The production of pictures — where it exists — is largely confined to a handful of major companies, most of which are closely integrated with distributing com­ panies. These large producer-distributor groups have had substantial interests in cinema ownership, controll­

ing the best cinemas in many areas. Many other cinemas are owned by large circuits which are the most powerful customers of the producers and distributors. It is understandable that, when choices must be made regarding the showing of films, the producer-distributor groups will favour cinemas owned by large circuits, the disfavour of which they cannot afford. Ordinary com­ mercial producence [sic] and these special interests coincide: the producer owned or circuit cinema Ts the obvious choice for an important first-run. But this is not always so: rarely, an independently owned cinema of first class amenity is preferred for first-run to circuit cinemas of lesser attraction.

(ii) Concluding his decision, Dr Venturini considers specific elements of the MPDA’s clearance applications: 19.7. There are provisions in the standard form con­ tracts for payment in advance: Clause 44 of the Victoria and Tasmania (Clause 46 of the South Australia — and New South Wales — contracts).

"The Distributor may from time to time by notice re­ quire hire payable at a flat rate for a film in respect of the threatre and the purchase price and hiring charges for advertising matter (either for a limited time or generally until the Exhibitor has been otherwise notified in writing by the Distributor) to be paid in advance or at any time earlier that is set out in the nbxt preceding clause PROVIDED THAT such notice shall not be given to the Exhibitor unless he be, or shall have been, in default, under clause 43.”

Payment in advance has been operating for a long time, but has been “improved" with the introduction of the "Payment in advance” system which was agreed to by the applicant’s members on 23 June 1966 and started to operate throughout Australia as from 1 September 1967. The system is one whereby, if an ex­ hibitor falls in arrears in the payment of the hiring fee from a film, he is placed on a list, according to a certain procedure — in case of the first default — and automatically in case of subsequent defaults, or alleged defaults. Clearance for such system is, sought under C3753; authorization under A3482. The operation of this system is quite likely to result in a form of collective boycott or refusal by all distributors to deal with an ex­ hibitor, even though an exhibitor may be having a dis­ pute with a particular distributor only and on grounds which would not be sufficient to prevent normal, sound and safe commercial transactions with other dis­ tributors. [footnote omitted].

This is clearly a limitation of an exhibitor’s economic freedom.

The system is “ perfected” by the provisions of Clause 46 (Clause 48 of the South Australia — and New South Wales — contracts), which reads: “(a) Without prejudice to the rights of the Distributor under the two immediately preceding clauses, [foot­ note omitted] upon failure of the Exhibitor to comply with any requirement pursuant to either of the two im­ mediately preceding clauses, the Distributor shall be excused from delivering the film and advertising matter to which such requirement related. (b) Any cash or security deposited pursuant to the last preceding clause may be realised and appropriated by the Distributor in or towards the hire and any other moneys due in respect of the respec­ tive film or advertising matter relating thereto and im­ mediately after such realisation and appropriation the balance of such cash and realised security (if any) shall be repair or returned to the Exhibitor.”

An exhibitor is to give returns: Clause 50 of the Vic­ toria and Tasmania contract (Clause 52 of the South Australia — and New South Wales — contracts). This means that: “ (a) If any hire for a film be or were to be calculated in whole or in part on the gross receipt

TRADE PRACTICES

(i) the Exhibitor shall immediately after the authorised exhibition dates in the theatre or at in­ tervals stipulated by the Distributor, furnish to the Distributor an itemised statement in a form satisfactory to the Distributor of the daily atten­ dances, gross receipts, and other particulars rele­ vant to the calculation of the hire of such film in the theatre and such statement shall be certified to be correct by the Manager or other person responsi­ ble to the Exhibitor for the gross receipts, and so far as attendances and gross receipts are concern­ ed also by the chief ticket seller of the theatre; 19.9 To police the system, the following sub-clauses of Clause 50 (Clause 52 of the South Australia — and New South Wales — contracts) provide that: (ii) the Distributor or any person authorised by the Distributor, not being a person known to the Distributor to be interested in any theatre in competi­ tion with the theatre, shall have access to the theatre (including the box office) during the exhibition of the film. (ill) the Distributor or any person authorised by the Distributor, not being a person known to thé Distributor to be interested in any theatre in competi­ tion with the theatre, shall have access, during and after the exhibition of the film, to such of the Ex­ hibitor's books, records and entertainment tax returns or copies thereof as may be necessary to ascertain or verify the attendances, gross receipts and other particulars relevant to the calculation of the hire of any such film and shall have the right to take copies and extracts thereof and therefrom. (iv) Provided that the Distributor shall not be entitled to have access or to exercise the rights mentioned in paragraph (iii) by itself or any person authorised by it to ascertain or verify any particulars relevant to the hire of any film in the theatre other than attendances and gross receipts unless the Distributor shall first in writing have requested the Exhibitor to allow such access and rights to be had and exercised by the Auditor of the Distributor at the cost of the Exhibitor and shall in writing have notified to the Exhibitor a reasonable estimate of the fee of such Auditor and the Exhibitor thereupon has not agreed in writing to such request or has not paid to the Distributor such reasonable estimate, or fail to give to such Auditor such access and rights as are mentioned in paragraph (iii). (v) Provided further that if a Distributor during the period of hire has in accordance with paragraph (iv) had ascertained and verified any such particulars by its Auditor and such Auditpr has certified such par­ ticulars to be correct the Exhibitor shall be entitled to recover from the Distributor any fee paid by him to the Distributor for any further ascertainment and verification requested by the Distributor during such period of the particulars relevant to the hire of any film if the Distributor shall have arbitrarily made such last mentioned request. (vi) Nothing in the foregoing paragraphs shall preclude the parties agreeing upon any such ascer­ tainment and verification being carried out and cer­ tifie d to the D is trib u to r (at the expense of the Exhibitor) by the Auditor of the Exhibitor in lieu of by the Auditor of the Distributor or in lieu of by the Distributor or any such person authorized by it to have access and right as is mentioned in paragraph (ii) or to have such access and right as is mentioned in paragraph (iii) so far as may be necessary to ascer­ tain or verify the attendances and gross receipts and to take copies and extracts of the Exhibitor’s books and records (so far as relevant to attendances and gross receipts) and of entertainment tax returns or copies thereo* (b) The Distributor or any such person or Auditor so authorised or entitled to access shall have the same rights and access whenever it is necessary to ascer­ tain gross receipts or other relevant particulars in respect of any period of default by the Exhibitor so that average receipts and other relevant particulars may be ascertained or for any other purpose of this Agreement. (c) all information so given and obtained shall be con­ fidential and shall not be disclosed by the Distributor except in or for the purposes of a proceeding arising out of this Agreement or as required by the Auditors of the Distributor or by law. (d) The Exhibitor will not prevent or impede any such access. (e) If the Exhibitor do [sic] not duly comply with this clause, the Distributor (whether or not this Agreement has been terminated or suspended) may assess the amount of the hire payable for any film in question in respect of the theatre and such assessment shall be prima facie evidence of its accuracy in any proceedings.”

Exhibitors have reported to the Commission that theatre checking used to be carried out openly to the extent that the delegate of the distributors would stand at the box office to ensure that numbered tickets were used and that only one roll of tickets was used at any one session. But now — in the words of some exhibitors — distributors are employing theatre checkers who are

unknown to the exhibitors and do not identify themselves. Checking procedures vary a great deal, left as they are to the inventiveness of the checkers and their hirers, but all share — it appears from details supplied to the Commission — elements of secrecy and other contemptible nature. “ Independent” exhibitors have been particularly vocal in complaining about these methods, and have objected in strong terms to the obnoxious practices. In some cases, on the basis of alleged discrepancies, they have been subjected to what they regard as intimidatory pressure tactics.

Objections were also raised to the open-endedness of the right to inspect an exhibitor’s books.

19.10. Although a standard form of contract is prescribed by state legislation in New South Wales and Queensland, the adoption of a standard form would not prevent the parties to a particular contract from adopting additional provisions.

This is the case of Queensland, where the applicant’s members agreed to an additional clause conferring upon the exhibitor rights of rejection in circumstances not contemplated by that State Act, but outlined in C3751. In discussion with officers of the Commission the applicant’s chairman has stated that extra rejection rights were needed to protect the exhibitors in Queensland, where the situation is unique in that cinemas are very far from each other. Hence films are circuited in the country and the individual exhibitor may, if he so wishes, reject up to 25 per cent of the films offered. This agreement is designed to allow an ex­ hibitor, who rejects less than 25 per cent of any supply, to reject a proportionately large number of material at the following supply.

The clause cannot be cleared because, in addition to the rejection rights provided in the >^ct, an exhibitor should have the right totally to reject unwanted films.

19.11 Under notice C3752, the applicant seeks clearance of additional clauses concerning the cir­ cuiting of films, undue costs incurred by an exhibitor and the checking of theatres.

Circuiting was represented to officers of the Commis­ sion as necessary on the ground that it helps to reduce an exhibitor’s freight costs. During the circuiting of films, an exhibitor may — due to a mistake — find that he has two distributors' products for the one show, or that an actor appears in two subsequent shows. In cases such as this the exhibitor is allowed to postpone the showing of one of the films but, unless he rejects it availing himself of his right of rejection, he must show it at a later date. This is purportedly the meaning of the expression “conflicting product” as employed in Clause 1 (a) of C3752.

This clause contains an element of coercion which is incompatible with an exhibitor’s freedom.

The record of the interviews with exhibitors reflects a mixture of self-delusion, pessimism and resignation on their part.

There is self-delusion in the statement by one of them that the industry is a “ partnerhsip” between distributors and exhibitors. Certainly it is not a legal partnership, for this is expressly excluded by Clause 65 of the Victoria and Tasmania standard form contract.

There is pessimism on the part of the exhibitors that nothing can or will be done to improve their condition.

There is resignation to accept and conform to the dis­ tributors' requirements because of a conviction that it is hopeless to do otherwise.

In the best tradition of Hollywood — that inexhausti­ ble mass production centre of fantasies and synthetic reputations — standard form contracts such as those submitted are a triumph of make-believe to disguise the substance. Having started out with the appearance of settling the terms between free agents, they are chang­ ed in character by the introduction of additional unex­ pected clauses which deal with something completely different. The deception of celluloid has ceased to be a mere propaganda device for the millions of hearts and minds around the world eager to be fed instant emotions and substitutes for thought. It has now become second nature; but the rhetoric and the reality draw ever further apart.

The Commission is now invited by the applicant to believe that the adoption of the submitted standard form contracts does not have a significant effect on competition. If this were the case, legality would then turn upon clever draftmanship. Economic clout and clever draftmanship have enabled the applicant to per­ suade some unfortunate persons that they are indepen­ dent business operators — free agents, “partners” . In fact they have been deprived of independence by so many contract provisions in so many areas of their business that they have no more freedom and much less security than an employed manager.

The relationship between distributors and exhibitors is — seen from a vantage point — sick, unhealthy and unbelievably restrictive.

If such standard form contracts were cleared, an ex­ hibitor would be given the opportunity to make an offer that he cannot refuse to make — so much for freedom.

The word itself, in the present context rings hollow, derisory. What the applicant chooses to call competition is to true, free competition what military music is to music.

The proposed contracts and additional clauses run

afoul of the Trade Practices Act 1974-75 in that they do have and are likely to have a significant effect on com­ petition.

21. Clearance is denied.

Postscript: On August 4, 1976, in a letter to the Commission, the solicitors for the MPDA sur­ prisingly announced that the agreements and practices in which their clients had sought clearances and authorizations had been ter­ minated or discontinued. Cinema Papers reproduces this letter below.

Time alone will tell to what extent the MPDA has had to change its ways in these matters.

Reports suggest that the Commission will be keeping an ever watchful eye on MPDA prac­ tices and that a full-scale inquiry into the exhibition-distribution industry may be in the air.

The Secretary, t Trade Practices Commission, G.P.O. Box 1851; CANBERRA CITY, A.C.T. 2601 Dear Sir, Members of Motion Picture Distributors’ Association of Australia C3749-C3753 and A3482 We refer to your telex of the 14th July 1976 which was in the following terms: “Not because of the claim by the applicants of prejudice, but because of their claim that they have further submissions that the Trade Practices Commission should consider, the Trade Practices Commission is prepared to receive within three weeks from now any further submissions the applicants wish to make in this matter and as a Full Commission to reconsider in the light of them the notices for clearance C3749-C3753.”

Our clients have noted that notwithstanding the sub­ missions by us of the 9th July 1976 concerning the deci­ sion of 29th June 1976 the Commission has taken the view that the decision should be placed on the register and published as a decision. Our clients have also noted that the Commission does not recognise the existence of any prejudice to the applicants and is merely prepared to receive within three weeks from the 14th July any further submissions the applicants wish to make and as a Full Commission to reconsider in the light of them the notices for clearance.

Our clients strongly hold-the view that the decision of 29th June 1976 is grossly unfair to them and was arrived at by procedures which were grossly unfair to them. Our clients regard the decision as a nullity and there is ample authority for that view. The applicants have now been in­ vited by the Commission to make further submissions.

The decision of 29th June 1976 has been issued as a deci­ sion of the Commission and the publicity which the deci­ sion has received has compounded the unfairness to the applicants. It does not seem to the applicants to be a fair procedure for the applicants now to be placed in the posi­ tion of making submissions with the decision of 29th June 1976 being still before the Commission as a decision and not having been withdrawn by the Commission so that the applications can be considered de novo.

Moreover, it is noted that the member responsible for the decision of 29th June 1976 will be able to participate further in the consideration of the applications. Having regard to our submissions of the 9th July 1976 this is not a reasonable procedure and the applicants could not be expected to accept it. The applicants believe that they have been left with no alternative but to terminate the agreements and withdraw the applications.

A resolution was passed on the 4th day of August 1976 terminating all of the agreements and providing for all other parties to be notified of the termination. A formal withdrawal of all applications is attached.

Yours truly, DAWSON W ALDRON To the Trade Practices Commission.

Notice is hereby given that Cinema International Cor­ poration Pty. Limited, Columbia Pictures Pty. Limited, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pty. Limited, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation (Australia) Pty. Limited, United Artists (Australasia) Pty. Limited, Warner Bros.

(Australia) Pty. Limited hereby withdraw notices seeking clearances of contracts, arrangements or understandings numbers C3749-C3753 and application for authorisation A3482. .

Dated this 4th day of August 1976.

Signed for and on behalf of the applicant companies H. W. Connolly Authorised Person

★

Cinema Papers, September— 157

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PRODUCTION

SURVEY 35mm PRE-PRODUCTION

Production Manager ............. Ross Matthews Running Time ................................... 97 mins Cast: Susannah York, John Waters, John Screenplay............................Donald Crombie Budget............................................... $507,000 Castle, Trevor Howard, Noel Ferrier, Martin Based on the Novel By .. Elizabeth O’Conner Progress ................................Post-production Harris, Abigail, Gerard Kennedy, George Photography................... Peter James A.C.S. Synopsis: A love story set in a Victorian Mallaby, Charles Tingwell, Gus Mercurio, Production Designer ..............

Owen Williams country town in 1920.

It begins in 1915 with the Bruce Spencer, Sean Scully, Serge Lazareff.

CROCODILE Costume Design ................... Judith Dorsman Australian Forces in Gallipoli.

Length ................................................Feature Cast: To be announced.

Budget.......................... $1,000,000 (approx.)

D irector................................................... TerryBourke Length .............................................. Feature Progress ..............................Post-production Distributor................................Not confirmed DEATHCHEATERS Budget..............................................$600,000 Production Company . Jenbur Films presents Progress .......................Shooting April, 1977 a Samurai Production Synopsis: An Irish-Australian teamster loses D irector.......................Brian Trenchard-Smith TH E P IC T U R E Executive Producers .........James G. Jenner his livelihood when the first motor lorry comes Distributor....................................... Roadshow (Jenbur), Des Dawson (Samurai) SH O W M AN into a small Queensland gulf town in 1922. The Production Company............... Deathcheaters Producer..................................................TerryBourke PTy. Ltd. film is concerned with the conflict between the Executive Producer ..........

Richard Brennan Associate Producer .............. Patrick Clayton D irector........................................

John Power teamsters, the trucker and the way this affects Producer..................................................BrianTrenchard-Smith Production Secretary....................... PenelopeWells Distributor......................................Roadshow the teamster’s family relationships.

Associate Producer ............... John Fitzgerald Screenplay ; ............................................ TerryBourke Production Company.......................Limelight Production Managers ............. Betty Barnard, Story.........................................................TerryBourke Productions Pty. Ltd. LASSETER’S REEF Lyn McEncroe Photography............ . Brian Probyn B.S.C. Producer................... ................Joan Long Production Co-ordirlators.......Betty Barnard, Production Manager ..............Basil Appleby Underwater Photography................Ron and Production Company.........Triangle Features .

BronwynBrostoff Valerie Taylor Production Secretary............... Jenny Tosolini Producer...................................... Russ Karel Production Accountant.......................... MarieBrown Colour Process........................ Eastmancolor Assistant Directors...................Mark Egerton, Screenplay...................................

Sonia Borg Assistant Directors....................................

Lyn McEncroe, Stills Photographer...................................ChicStringer Mark Turnbull Howard Griffiths Chris Maudson, Art Director...................................Barry Adler Screenplay ................................... Joan Long Length .............................................. Feature Steve Andrews Photography.............. Geoffrey Burton A.C.S. Special Photographic Budget..............................................$400,000 Screenplay.......................................... MichaelCove EffectsToel Studios (Tokyo) Camera O perator...................................GayleTattersall Progress ............................... Pre-production Story........................................................ BrianTrenchard-Smith Lighting ........................................ Tony Tegg Scenic A rtist........................Walter Stackpool Synopsis: An adventure story, set in 1930, Photography^.............................................John Seale Colour Process ......................... Eastmancolor M u sic............................................Bob Young about an expedition which Lasseter arranged 2nd Unit Photographer . . . . David Williamson Art Director............................................. DavidCopping Continuity ..................Margaret-Rose Dunphy to find his fabulous reef of gold.

Clapper/Loader.......................David Brostoff Costume Designer ................Judith Dorsman Make-up ............................ Deryck De Niese, Lighting ...................................... Derek Jones, E dito r........................................................ NickBeauman Rena Hoffmanis Allan Dunstan Continuity........., ........................ Moya Iceton Titles.................................... Walter Stackpool SPARKS Colour Process ........................ Eastmancolor' Make-up ...................................Peggy Carter Technical Adviser...............Dr Graham Webb Stills Photographer............ David Williamson (University of Sydney) Sound Recordist.......................Don Connolly D irector....................................................... IanBarry Production Designer ................... Darrell Lass Cast: John Meillon, John Ewart, Jack) Stunts................................. Peter Armstrong, Executive Producer ..................Tony Buckley Art Director...............................................

Alan McKenzie Weaver.

Frank Lennon, Producer..................................................... IanBarry Running Time ................................. 100 mins Herb Nelson Original Screenplay .......................... Ian Barry Props Buyer.............................................JohnCarroll Standby Props........................................BruceBarber Budget........................................ $552,000 Photography..........: ................. Graham Lind ■Cast: U.S. and British leads (to be signed).

JennyCampbell Progress .......................... Shooting Oct.-Nov. Colour Process......................... Eastmancolor Wardrobe .........................

Australian cast includes: Michael Craig, M usic.........................................................Bob Hughes Synopsis: A comedy-drama created around Cast: Edward Woodward, Helen Morse, Hugh Joseph Furst, Cornelia Francis, Gordon Music Director...........................................BobHughes the adventures of a team of travelling picture Keays-Byrne.

MacDougall, Jewell Blanch, Rowena Wallace, Running Time .................................. 110 mins E ditor...........................................Ron Williams showmen in the NSW back country in the late Alfred Sandor, Robert Quitter, Keith Lee, Gus Sound Editor .......................Tomash Pokorny 1920s and early 1930s. The team consists of Budget................................... '......... $390,000 Mercurio, Tom Richards, Reg Gorman, Roger Continuity ...............................Jenny Quigley father, son, their pianist and their dog. The film Progress ........................ Shooting Jan. 1977 Ward, Kit Taylor, Lionel Long, Terry Camilleri, Make-up .....................................

Jill Porter depicts their clashes with a smarter, rival Synopsis: Harry Sparks, a prominent film Dennis Miller, Sandra Lee-Paterson, Barry showman: their romantic encounters with director, who was blinded at the height of his Chief G rip ......................... Mery McLaughlan Eaton, Mark Edwards, Sandy Harbutt, Jay members of the opposite sex; their problems career, returns to make a film which becomes G affer.................................................... DeryckJones Paul, Phil Avalon, Tom Oliver, John Nash, Carpenter ................................... John Deuten when talkies threaten their livelihood. larger and stranger than life.

Barry Barkla, Ken Goodlet, Mark Hashfield, Sound Recordist.......................................

Ken Hammond Peter Thompson, Alan Cassell and Introducing Mixer .......................................... Peter Fenton Lois Cook.

STORM BOY boom Operator................Julian McSweeney Running Time ................................. 120 mins Titles........................................ David Dunean 35mm IN PRODUCTION Budget..........................................$1.6 million D irector................... .......Henri Safran Stunt Co-ordinator.................................

Grant Page Gauge .....'.........................35mm Panavision Production Company ................S.A.F.C. Stunts.......................................... Grant Page, Progress .................................. Pre-production Producer .................. .........Matt Carroll Heath Harris, Synopsis: A 20-foot rogue crocodile terrorizes ....... .. Jane Scott Associate Producer .

Max Aspin an outback town in far Northern Australia.

Location Manager... . Beverly Davidson BREAK OF DAY Herbie Nelson Shooting on location in Chillagoe, Cairns and Production Secretary ....... Barbara Ring Catering..................... John and Lisa Faithful Brisbane begins on May 16, 1977.

D irector..................................................... KenHannam . . . . . Ian Goddard, Assistant Directors ..

Cast: John Hargreaves, Grant Page, Margaret Distributor................G.U.O. Film Distributors Ian Jamieson, Gerad, Judith Woodroffe, Ralph Cotterel, Drew Pty. Ltd. Forsythe, John Krimnel, Brian TrenchardIan Allen Production Company.......Clare Beach Films Screenplay................ . . . . . , Sonia Borg THE ELECTRIC CANDLE Smith, Max Aspin, David Brooks, Michael Producer..............................................PatriciaLovell Story .......................... .........Colin Theile Aitkins, Roger Ward, Wallas Eaton, Peter Photography ...............

Associate Producers ....................Cliff Green, Collingwood, Chris Haywood, Reg Evans, Vin­ ....... Geoff Burton Director ................. ....................... Andrew Vial Geoff Burton cent Ball, Anne Semler.

Camera Operator . . . . ....... Ross Nichols Production Company.........Andrew Vial Film Focus Puller.............. .......... David Burr Production Manager .................... Pom Oliver Running Time ................................... 90 mins Productions P/L Clapper/Loader.........

Assistant Directors...................Mark Egerton, .........Erika Addis Screenplay .....................................Andrew Vial $150,000 Mark Turnbull Budget..............................................

Lighting ..................... ........... Tony Tegg Length ..................................................... Feature Post Production .. .Film Production Services Steve Andrews Laboratory .......................................Colorfilm Best B o y ................... . . . . Allan Dunstan Progress .................................... Pre-production Original Screenplay..................................CliffGreen Electrician................. __ Keith Johnson Synopsis: A story of developing relationships Progress ................................. .In Production Photography....................Russell Boyd A.C.S. Stills Photographer.. . . . . . David Kynoch in the high country.

Synopsis: Steve and Rod are professional Camera O perator....................................JohnSeale Art Director................ ... David Copping stuntmen. They are involved in an increasingly Lighting............................... Brian Bansgrove Buyer/Dresser .......... .........Neil Angwin bizarre series of incidents which culminate in Colour Process................ Eastmancolor 5247 their being inveigled into raiding the Philippine Standby Props Master ...........Ken James THE FLAME STONE Stills Photographer..................................... IanPotter Construction Manager . . . . Herbert Pinter Director................................ Roger Whittaker based stronghold of a criminal mastermind.

Production Designer .............

Wendy Dickson Music Director.......... ... Michael Carlos Screenplay.................................... Ted Roberts M u sic ...................................................

George Dreyfus E dito r......................... .. G. Turney Smith Story........................................ Roger Whittaker MRS ELIZA FRASER E dito r........................................................ MaxLemon Sound Editor ............ ......... Bob Cogger Running Time .....................................110 mins Sound E d ito r................................. Greg Bell Assistant Editors....... . . . . Viano Jacksa, Budget...................................................$400,000 D irector.......................................Tim Burstall Assistant E ditor.......................Peter Fletcher Kerry Regan Progress ................... .. ........ First Draft Script Disfributor...................................... Roadshow Continuity .................................Lyn McEncroe Continuity .................. .........Moya Iceton Synopsis: Action adventure story about a Production Company...................... Hexagon Make-up ................................ Derek de Niese Make-up/Wardrobe .. .......Helen Dyson veteran miner and a young city man who team Producer.....................................Tim Burstall Production Secretary.............................JennyTosolini Chief G rip .................. .........David Petley up to search for opal in Coober Pedy.

Associate Producer .....................Alan Finney Grip Assistants .........

Chief G rip .................................Ross Erikson .........Phil Warner, Production Manager .................Michael Lake Sound Recordist......................Don Connolly Michael White, M usic.....................................Bruce Smeaton Mixer .......................................... Peter Fenton Bill Connolly THE IRISHMAN Photography..........................

Robin Copping Boom O perator.......................David Cooper ... Ken Hammond Sound Recordist (Working Title) Art Director....................................

Les Binns Mixer ................

Titles....... ; ................................. Adrian Rolph . . . . . Peter Fenton E dito r..................... Edward McQueen-Mason Runner..................................................... HughPiper Director..................................Donald Crombie Boom Operator .

Julian McSweeney Production Co-ordinator........... Christine Suli Accountant.......

Cast: Sara Kestelman, Andrew McFarlane, .......... Bill Altman Production Com pany........Forest Home Films Pty Ltd Publicity__ ____ Ingrid Mason, John Bell, Tony Barry, Ben Production Administrator...........Robert Kirby .........Peter Welsh Unit Manager...........................................JohnChase Producer................................Anthony Buckley Gabriel, Denis Olsen, Geraldine Turner.

Jeni Wagener

Above: Tom (Andrew McFarlane) and Alice, (Sar Kestelman) experience a deepening relationship. Ken Hannan's Break of Day.

Cinema Papers, September— 159

Set Designer .......................... David Copping E d ito r.............................................. Rod Hay 35 mm IN RELEASE Continuity ............................... Lyn McEncroe Assistant Editor.....................Lochlin Duncan Make-up ............................. Patricia Cunlisse Continuity ...............................Teresa O'Leary Sound Recordist.......................................DonConnolly Make-up ................................Josie Knowiand Boom Operator....................................RolandMcManis Hairdresser............................Cheryl Cowdrey FA N TA S M Sound Recordist.......................................KenHammond Chief G rips.........................................GraemeMardell, Mixer ............................................. Phil Judd Ross Erickson Director...................................Richard Bruce Wardrobe Designer ................ Judy Dorsman Boom Operator......................................DavidCasper Distributor........................................ Filmways Animal Trainer...........................................JimPrine Grip ......................................Graeme Mardell Production Company.......................TLN Film Gaffer....................................................... AlanWalker Horsemaster...........................................HeathHarris Productions Casting............................... Sandra McKenzie P rops...................................... Neil Matthews Executive Producers ................... Leon Gorr, Cast: Robert Betties, Tom Farley, Andrew Stunt Co-ordiantor................. Larry McGarry Ted Mulder McFarlane, Mary Ward, Julie Anne Nubold.

Best B o y ..........................George Harrington Producer..........................Antony I. Ginnane Progress ............................. Awaiting Release Screenplay Runner.................................... Mike Atkinson ............................... Ross Dimsey Synopsis: Story of harness racing in 1911.

Cast: Brett Maxworthy, Sean Kramer, Spike From an idea b y ..............Antony I. Ginnane Milligan, Lionel Long, Robert Qullter, Shirley Photography........................................VincentMonton Cameron, Jack Allen, Mike Preston, Jackie S U M M E R C IT Y TH E LIV IN G G O D D ES S Colour Process..............................Metrocolor Rees, Rob Steele, Danny Adcock, Judy Production Secretary Connelli, Al Thomas.

D ire c to r.....................................Ross Hamilton Director..................................................FrankHeimans (Los Angeles) .........................Chris Knapp Running Time .................................. 93 min.

D istribution....................................Brian Walsh Production Company..........................Cinetel Unit Manager (L.A .).................................TomHammel Budget.............................................$224,000 Austin Levy Productions Pty. Ltd. Assistant to Director (L.A.). . . . Cookie Knapp Progress ............................. Awaiting Release Producer................................................ FrankHeimans Production Com pany..................Phillip Avalon Assistant Camera (L.A.) ..............Stuart Dell Synopsis: Family adventure story set in S crip t........................................ Paul Ricketts Productions Make-up (L.A.) ................... Debbie Maxwell Australia in the 1800s which tells of the travels P ro d u cer.....................................Phillip Avalon Photography..............................Paul Onorato Sound Recordist (L.A .)............Neil Rozenski and adventure of a 12-year-old boy shipwreck­ Production Manager ................ John Flahety 2nd Unit Photography................. David Perry Gaffer (L.A.)............................Frank Silveira ed off the Australian coast.

Production Assistants ........... Derek Catteral, E ditor..................................................... FrankHeimans Grip/Stills (L.A.) ........................Ron Batsdorf Rick Bradley Sound Recordist..........................Chris Doig 2nd Grip (L.A.) ........................ John Murphy Assistant D ire ctors...................... Chris Fraser, DON’S PARTY Narrator.................................... Paul Ricketts Production Secretary Sandy Gateman Research...................................Michael Allen (Australia)....................................... MarlenePearce Production A cco u n ta n t............... Austin Levy Synopsis: The film exposes for the first time a Assistant Camera (Aust.).......Robert Powell Director..............................Bruce Beresford S cre e n play.................................. Phillip Avalon strange cult of virgin-worship in Nepal. The Make-up (Aust.) ...........................Nan Dunne Producer.................................Phillip Adams Photography...................Brian Probyn B.S.C. Living Goddess has such great power over Stills Photographer (Aust.).......... Earl Mante Associate Producer ............... David Burrows Camera O p e ra to r....................................... MattButler men that even the King of Nepal must receive Sound Recordist (Aust.)...............Paul Clark Production Secretary........ Bronwyn Brostoff Camera A ssista n t...................Robyn Coombs her blessing each year to continue ruling the Gaffer (Aust.).......................................... TonyHoltham Assistant Directors............

Mike Martorana, Colour P ro c e s s ........................... Eastmancolor Tovio Lember country. The film is the second part of a series Grip (Aust.)..........................................RichardFrancis Stills Photographer.................................... PeterCarrette E ditor....................................................... FordFootpole Screenplay ................. .

David Williamson entitled Woman Unique.

Art D irector................. Eddie Van De Madden Additional Sound Photography............................Don McAlpine Prop M a n a g e r.............................. Steve Salvo Effects................................................. JohnPhillips, Camera Operator.................Gale Tattersall S U M M E R OF SE C R ETS Wardrobe ..................................... Ben Bardillo Focus Puller.................................Peter Moss Phil Sterling M u s ic ....................................... Doug Ashdown, Director.................................... Jim Sharman Mixer ........................................ Bob Gardiner Clapper/Loader..................... David Brostoff Jimmy Stewart Distributor................................................

BEF Opticals...................................... Larry Wyner Colour Process....................... Eastmancolor E d ito r.................................................Alan Trott Production Company.............. Secret Picture Cast: Dee Dee Levitt, Maria Arnold, Bill Stills Photographer............ Michael Giddens Continuity ............................... Therese O’Leary Productions Margold, Gretchen Gayle, Rene Bond, Al E ditor.......................................Bill Anderson Make-up .....................................Bromyn Jones Producer............................. Michael Thornhill Williams, Con Covert, Mara Lutra, Uschi Assistant Editor................... Andrew Stewart Grips ..................................................Bob Ross, . Continuity ....................................Moya Iceton Production Manager ..............Ross Matthews Digart, Maria Welton, John Holmes, Mary John Collins Gavin, Gene Allen Poe, Robert Savage, Kirby Make-up and Hair ........................ Judy Lovell Production Co-ordinator......... Jenny Woods Sound R ecordist.......................... Max Henser Hall, Shayne, Sue Doloria, Al Ward, Clement Wardrobe ................................... Anna Senior Assistant Directors..................Errol Sullivan, Boom O p e ra to r..........Anne Maree Chandler Mark Turnbull, St. George, Serena.

Sopund Recordist......................... Des Bone G a ffe r......................................Brian Bansgrove Keith Keygate Running Time ................................... 90 min.

Assistant Sound Recordist.......Graham Irwin Electrician.............................. John Cummings Budget............................................... $70,000 Key Grip .....................................David Petley Screenplay.................................John Aitken Graphic Artist ..........................Phil Mortlock Research................................Sally Campbell Gaffer....................................................... AlanMartin Progress ............................... ........ In Release Casting C onsultant.................Mitch Mathews Photography............................. Russell Boyd Assistant Grip ........................ Neil Matthews S ynopsis: An A u stra lia n p s y c h ia tris t Runner...................................................... RobertMarriott Focus Puller.................................Peter Moss Assistant Electrics ................. Simon Perton researches the ten most common female fan­ Cast: John Jarrat, John Ewart, Andrew Colour Process........................ Eastmancolor tasies.

Casting Director .....................Alison Barrett McFarlane, Nick Canny, Phil Avalon, Janet Art Director........................ ........ Jane Norris Standby Props............................. Robert Hill Murray, Zoe Bertram.

Wardrobe Designer ........ Kristen Fredrikson Runner/3rd G rip ....................................LindaBlagg Length ...................................................Feature TH E FOU RTH W IS H Cast: John Hargreaves, Jeanie Drynan, Wardrobe M aster................. Bruce Finlayson Progress ................................Post-production Graeme Blundell, Veronica Lang, Ray Barrett, Design Consultants .........Michael Ramsden, Synopsis: A period psycho-drama, set in a Director.................................

DonChaffey Stuart McDonald Pat Bishop, Graham Kennedy, Kit Taylor, small coastal town.

Production Company........................ S.A.F.C. Candy Raymond, Harold Hopkins, Claire Props Buyer............................... Lissa Coote Executive Producer ........................ Jill Robb Standby Props...................................... MonteFieguth Binney.

Producer.................................... JohnMorris Construction Manager.............................. RayBrocus Length ..............................................Feature Associate Producer ................... .Matt Carrol M usic...................................... Cameron Allen Budget.............................................$300,000 35mm AWAITING RELEASE Production Manager . . . . 4........... Matt Carrol E ditor.......................................................SaraBennett Progress ............................Awaiting Release Location Manager..............Beverly Davidson Synopsis: Adapted from David Williamson’s Assistant Editor........................ Helen Brown Production Secretary...................... Amy Pulle Dubbing Editor ............................. Greg Beli play of the same name.

Production Accountant.........Fulvio Filippino BARNEY Continuity ................................. Gilda Barachi Assistant Directors................... Mark Egerton, Make-up . ...........................* ......... Liz Michie HARNESS FEVER Steve Knapman, Sound Recordist.......................................Ken Hammond D irector............................ David Waddington Ron Sanders Re-recordist....... ......... Peter Fenton Distributor........................ Columbia Pictures Director...................................... Don Chaffey Sound Screenplay...............................

Michael Craig Boom Operator......................................DavidCooper Production Company...... D.S. Waddington Production Company..................Walt Disney Photography ..............................

GeoffBurton Grip ...................................... Georgie Dryden Productions P/L Producer..........................Jerome Courtland Camera O perator................ Gayle Tattersall Assistant Grip ............................. Phil Warner Executive Producer ................Michael Tarant Associate Producer............... Hugh Attwooll Focus Puller........................ John Illingworth Gaffer................................. Brian Bansgrove Producers....................... David Waddington, Managed in Australia Clapper/Loader...................... David Foreman Best B o y .................................

PaulGantner John Williams b y ............................. Samson Productions Stills Photographer................. David Kynoch Assistant Electronics ................. Ian Plummer Production Manager ...................... Les White Production Manager ................Sue Milliken Art Director..........................

DavidCopping Choreography ........................Christine Koltai Production Secretary................. Cara Fames Production Co-ordinator..............Pom Oliver Buyer ....................

Graham Walter Cast: Arthur Dignam, Rufus Collins, Nell Producfion Accountant..............Clare Priest Production Accountants.........Fred Harding, Dresser .........................................Ken James Andrew Sharp, Kate Fitzpatrick.

Assistant Directors............... Chris Maudson, Treifha Ghent Campbell, Wardrobe Assistant............................. MandySmith Running Time ...................................100 min Michael Carlton Assistant Directors................................. MarkEdgerton, Construction Manager........................ HerbertPalter Screenplay............................................. ColinDrake Steve Knapman Budget.............................................$350,000 M usic....................................

Tristan Cary Progress ........................ Awaiting Release Photography.........................Richard Wallace Screenplay................................... Ed Jurist E ditor................................. .G. Turney-Smith 2nd Unit Photography..............Ross Nichols Based on the Novel..................The Boyd’s of Synopsis: Not available.

Assistant E ditor......................................Viano Jacksa Camera O perator.....................Ross Nichols Black River Dubbing Editor ....................... Lindsay Frazer Focus Puller........................................... DavidBurrPhotography ........................ Geoff Burton Assistant Dubbing E d ito r........... Craig Lahuff Clapper/Loader....................David Brostoff A PO LO G Y 2nd Unit Photography............................... BillGrimmond Continuity ............................Caroline Stanton Colour Process........................ Eastmancolor Camera O perator..........................John Seal The Editor wishes to apoligize to the Make-up ............................

Helen Dyson Stills Photographer.................................GeoffNeild Lighting ........................................Tony Tegg producers of Break of Day for any embarrass­ Assistant Make-up '....■............................ LloydJames Set Decorator ................................. Ray Frost Colour Process........................Eastmancolor ment caused by typographical errors which Location Hairdresser , __ _ .Maddy Davidson Costumes .....................................Carol Berry Stills Photographers....... ...... John Brothers, appeared In last issue. The correct details are Sound Recordist.................................... BarryBrown M usic.................................................. TommyTycho Geoff Neild listed above.

Boom Operator................................ Bob Allen C atering.......................... Anna-Mary Catering Technical A d v is e r..........................Grant Page Pelican Trainer ........................ Gordon Noble Dialogue C oach...................Michael Caulfield R unner............................................. Scott Hicks Cast: Peter Cummins, Greg Rowe, David Gulpilil.

Running Time ..................................... 87 mins B u d g e t.................................................$300,000 Progress ............................................. Mixing Synopsis: A young man and his father, who live in an isolated coastal wilderness known as "The Coorang” , rescue and raise a young pelican. The bird changes the relationships between father and son and their futures.

160—Cinema Papers, September

Above Left: Robert Betties and friend in the SAFC production, The Fourth Wish-.

Above Right: A thrilling stunt involving a dive off a 13 metre waterfall. Jim Sharman’s Summer of Secrets.

PRODUCTION SURVEY Chief G rip ................................ Phil Warner Caterers ..................... Anna & Mary Catering 16mm PRODUCTION SURVEY G rip/Driver..............................Michael White Runner............................... Mikolaj Luhowskij G affer............................................Tony Tegg Cast: Joy Dunstan, Graham Matters, Bruce 3rd Electrics........................................... ErrikaAddis Spence, Michael Carman, Garry Waddell.

Best B o y ................................. Allan Dunstan Running Time ...................................90 min.

ALIENS AMONGST US Carpenter/Laborer................................ PhillipSurry Budget............................................. $150,000 Publicity................................................... PeterWelsh Progress ........................................ In Release Production Company . . . .Mantis Wildlife Films Cast: John Meillon, Robert Betties, Robyn Synopsis: A rock and roll road movie.

P roducers..................................Densey Clyne, Nevin, Brian Anderson, Michael Craig, Julie Jim Frazier Dawson, Anne Haddy, Ron Haddrick, Julie Script and S to r y ........................ Densey Clyne MAD DOG MORGAN Hamilton, Moishe Smith.

Photography....................................Jim Frazier Length ..............................................Feature Colour Process ............................ Ektachrome D irector..................................... Philippe Mora Budget..............................................$240,000 Stills Photographer...................Densey Clyne Progress .........................................In Release Distributor.................................................BEF M u s ic ......................................... Derek Strahan Synopsis: A film exploring the rare nature of a Production Company.......Mad Dog Pty. Ltd. E d ito rs ....................................... Densey Clyne, father/son relationship. Initially refusing to Producer..............................Jeremy Thomas Jim Frazier, accept the inevitability of his son’s death due to Associate Producer .......... Richard Brennan Cinetel Productions leukemia, the father defies authority and con­ Production Supervisor................Peter Beilby N arrator......................................Densey Clyne vention in order to make his son’s life as full as Production Co-ordinator........... Jenny Woods Running Time ..................................... 50 mins possible. Eventually, he discovers the depth of Production Accountant........Geoffrey Pollock Synopsis: A unique documentary made for his own courage and determination, and is Secretary................................. Penelope Wells television, of the live activities of spiders, from Assistant Directors.................... Michael Lake, “ reborn" a man. the time they hatch from eggs, through their Chris Maudsen, growth and development, courtship and William Mora NUTS, BOLTS AND mating, and finally the making of the eggsacs Screenplay......................................... PhilippeMora by the female. Some exciting prey-catching se­ BEDROOM SPRINGS Based on the Book .......... Morgan the Bold D irector...................................... Gary Young Production Company . .. Garron International Producer.................................... Gary Young Production Manager ............ Adrian Penning Screenplay................................. Gary Young Photography.........................Malcolm Pollard Lighting ..................... ............... John Lennon Colour Process........................Eastmancolor Editors........................................Gary Young, Malcolm Pollard Continuity .......................... Pamela Jackman Sound Recordist............................John True Sound Remix............................. Atlab Sound Titles...................................................... Atlab, Eric Porter Productions Cast: Steve Michaels, Val Moore, Lyn Samp­ son, Carol Lane, Barbara Jackson, Gary Young.

Running Time .................................. . 75 min.

Budget.................................................$65,000 Progress .........................................In Release Synopsis: About "it” and how to get “it” , if you don’t get sprung getting “it” . A ribald, raunchy romp about the oldest subject — rated R.

Bushranger

quences are the highlight of the film.

by Margaret Carnegie COME INTO MY PARLOUR, Additional Research.........Margaret Carnegie SAID THE SPIDER . . .

Photography............................... Mike Molloy Camera O perator........................ John Seale 2nd Unit Cameraman ................Ron Horner Production Company . . . .Mantis Wildlife Films Focus Puller . . : ..........................Peter Rogers P roducers..................................Densey Clyne, Jim Frazier Clapper/Loader........................Robert Marden Script & Story ........................... Densey Clyne Colour Process........................ Eastmancolor Photography....................................Jim Frazier Stills Photographer................. Angus Forbes Colour P ro ce ss ............................ Ektachrome Art Director............................................... BobHilditch Stills Photographer...................Densey Clyne Special Artwork.........................................IvanDurrant M u s ic ......................................... Derek Strahan Costume Designer ..............Bruce Finlayson E d ito r......................................... Densey Clyne, Standby Props......................................RobertJones Jim Frazier, Assistant W ardrobe.........Wendy Robinson Property Buyer ............................Barry Adler Cinetel Productions N a rra to r......................................Densey Clyne Property Master ......................Monte Fieguth Running Time ..................................... 20 mins Construction Manager..............Danny Burnett Synopsis: This is a film about the predatory M usic......................................... Patrick Flynn techniques of spiders, in which it is shown that Aboriginal Songs and there is more to catching flies than simply in­ Didgeridoo............................. David Gulpilil viting them into your parlour. It runs through Traditional Songs.................Danny Spooner the predation behaviour of species ranging E ditor........................................... John Scott from the sedentary orb-weavers to the Magnifi­ Assistant E ditor.................... Peter Whitmore cent spider, who counterfeits the scent of a Continuity ................................. Gilda Barachi female moth in order to attract the male moth, Make-up .........................................Liz Michie which she promptly eats.

Assistant Make-up .................. .Trish Cunliffe OZ Hairdresser..............................William Kenrick SoundRecordist.........................................KenHarrimond DO I HAVE TO KILL MY CHILD . . .?

D irector..........................

Chris Lofven Supervising Dubbing Editor.......Bob Cogger Distributor................................................. BEF Assistant Dubbing E d ito r.......Andre Fleuren Production Company ... .Count Features Inc. D ire c to r................................. Donald Crombie Mixer ..........................................Peter Fenton Producers................................... Chris Lofven Production Company .. CID Productions/Film Boom Operator.............................Joe Spinelli Lyne Helms Australia Key Grip ...............................Graeme Mardell Associate Producer .......................Jane Scott Executive Producer ................ Anne Deveson Production Manager ................... Lyne Helms Grip ....................................... Noel McDonald P roducers......................................Janet Isaac, Gaffer...................................................... BrianBansgrove Production Secretaries.............Julie Hocking, ■ Tim Read Best B o y ...................................Paul Gantner Jenny Morris Assistant D ire cto r............................. Jerry Letts Carpenter .................................

David Munro Assistant Director.................... Waiter Boston Photography................................Dean Semler Electricians................................................. IanPlummer, Screenplay..............................................ChrisLofven Art D irector............................... Owen Williams Simon Purtin Photography.............................................. DanBurstall E d ito r.....................................Anthony Buckley 2nd Unit Photography............Vincent Monton W rangler.........................................Ken Grant Continuity ..................................Adrienne Read Assistant Wranglers.....................Vicki Grant, Camera Assistant..................................... IvanHexter Make-up .......................................Peggy Carter Ruth Beazley Clapper/Loader....................................... LouBrown Sound R ecordist...............................Bob Hayes Colour Process......................... Eastmancolor Stupts.............................................Grant Page Props ................................................ Ken James Location Liaison .........................Neville Lowe Stills Photographer..................................SusyWood G a ffe r............................................. Bruce Gailey Art Director............................. Robbie Perkins Titles................................... Optica! & Graphic Cast: Jacki Weaver, Brenden Lunney, Betty Assistant Art Director ...............Ivana Perkins Title Backgrounds .......................,..S.T. Gill Lucas, Willy Fennel, Cecily Poulson, John OrcSpecial Photographic Effects .. .Larry Wyner Negative Matching .......... Margaret Cardin sik, Lorna Leslie, Jeremy Letts.

Music ..........................................Ross Wilson Cast: Dennis Hopper, Jack Thompson, David Running Time ....................................... 50 min Gulpilil, Frank Thring, Michael Pate, Wallas E dito r......................................................... LesLuxford B u d g e t...................................................$57,000 Eaton, Bill Hunter, John Hargreaves, Martin Assistant Editors.....................................PeterBurgess Progress ................................Post-production Jim Conway Harris, Robin Ramsay, Graeme Blundell.

Synopsis: A young mother discovers she has Costumes ..................................Paul Harrison Running Time ...................................102 min the compulsion to kill her newly born child. The Budget............................................. $450,000 Wardrobe .............................. Judith Soloman ’baby bashing’ syndrome. The film follows herContinuity ........................................Jan Tyrell Progress ........................................ In Release struggle to control her feelings and her inability Synopsis: Based on the book by Margaret Make-up ...........................

JoanCooley to communicate her fears to those around her.

Carnegie.

Hairdresser..................................................ianMorrey Sound Recordist........................Danny Dyson Sound Re-recordist................................PeterFenton FLAKE WHITE Boom Operator................ Chris Goldsmith Production Company . .Elexir Film Associates Chief G rip ................................................. NoelMudie Photography.....................Gregory Von Merz G affer............................................. Mike Ewen Lighting ............................... Malcolm Harker Best B o y ...................................................PaulHolford Colour Process..............Eastmancolor 7252 Stunt Co-ordinator.......... Graham Matterick and 7242 Choreography ..............................Lyne Helms

Above: Dennis Hopper in the title role of Morgan. Philippe Mora’s Mad Dog Morgan.

Original M usic................... Peter Richardson, Vaughan Hillier, William Krawt E dito r...................................Malcolm Harker Sound Recordists.......................J. V. Hillier, P. Richardson Titles and Special Effects.............................. Malcolm Harker, Gregory Von Merz Running Time ...................................60 mins Progress ...................................Answer Print Synopsis: A glimpse into the life of one of Australia's top contemporary landscape artists during the creation of one painting.

GARDEN JUNGLE Production Company . . . .Mantis Wildlife Films Producers............................................ DenseyClyne, Jim Frazier Script and S to ry ................................. DenseyClyne Photography................................. Jim Frazier Colour Process .......................... Ektachrome Stills Photographer.............................. DenseyClyne M usic...................................... Derek Strahan Editors.....................................Densey Clyne, Jim Frazier, Cinetel Productions Narrator................................................DenseyClyne Running Time ...................................50 mins Synopsis: A television film about the small animals that live their secret lives around our dwellings. Sequences Include: the mating of praying mantises and giant leopard slugs, a predatory snail attacking a garden snail, the amazing way a sawfly lays its eggs inside leaf tissue, the camouflage and defence behaviour of insects (including the bombardier beetle repelling a funnelwebb spider).

GRAFCOM TWO (Working title) D irector............................... Alexander Milsky Distributor.............................................. AVEC Production Company............................. AVEC Producer............................... Ross Campbell Screenplay..........................Alexander Milsky Additional Photography .......... Des Bunyon, Rob McCubbin Colour Process ......................... Eastmancolor E ditor.................................................... RobertFrancis Sound E d ito r..........................................DavidHughes Anim ator............................. Alexander Milsky Running Time ...................................10 mins Progress .................................... ....Shooting Synopsis: A film for post-primary students aimed to stimulate ideas about communicating through non-verbal means. Elements of graphic communication examined include signs, symbols and pictographs. The film com­ plements a longer film, Graphic Com­ munication, still in production.

THE1DYLE D irector.................................................... PaulJansen Producer............................Aphrodite Kondos Screenplay .................................. Paul Jansen Photography.......................................... VinceMonton Camera Assistant..................................... IvanHexter Lighting ...................................Robbie Young Colour Process....................... Eastmancolor E dito r...................................... Louis Annivitti Sound Recordist......................Lloyd Carrick Sound Transfer.......................Charles Slater Cast: Val Lahlan, Robert Harrison.

Running Time .................................... 15 mins Budget..................... $2305 (to double-head) Progress ..............................Post-production Synopsis: An adaptation of a short story by Guy de Maupassant. *

MIND D irector...................................Wayne Moore Producer................................. Wayne Moore Screenplay ..............................Wayne Moore Photography.............................................EvanHam M usic...................................... Karel De Laat E dito r.................................... Richard Adams

Cinema Papers, September— 161

PRODUCTION SURVEY Narrator.....................................Densey Clyne Sound Recordist......................... Jan Murray PRISONERS SOFT SOAP Running Time ...................................20 mins Production Assistants ...............Janet Pratt, (Working title) Synopsis: The camouflage and defensive D irector................................................... MarkStiles Grieg Flinn, irector..........................................Ivan Gaal Michael Mulchay, techniques of insects, ranging through Production Company...................... Prisoners’ D Distributor...............................

Vincent Library Robin McKenzie resemblance of leaves and stems, mimicry of Action Group (NSW) Production Company.......... Horizontal Films Cast: Janet Pratt, Des Mulchay, Charmaine other creatures, and more active defences Producer.................................... Tony Green Executive Producer ........................ Ival Gaal, such as stinging spines, unpleasant smells, Research.....................................Mark Stiles Bird, Michael Cotter, Michael Mulchay. with the aid of the Film, Radio & Television and the cloud of acrid gas emitted by bombar­ Photography....................................... MarthaAnsara Process.................................................... B/WNegative Board dier beetles.

Running Time ...................................10 mins Camera Assistants.......... Sophia Turkiewicz, Production Manager .............Vivienne Mehes Budget................................................. $2194 Dagmar Ross, Production Co-ordinator.......Vivienne Mehes Progress ............................................. Editing Matt Butler Assistant Director........................John Reeves THE OLIVE TREE Synopsis: The story of a murder as induced by Colour Process................Eastmancolor 7247 S crip t........................................... John Reeves recurring sadistic dreams. (Period 1957).

Story................................................ HorizontalFilms D irector................................. Edgar Metcalfe E ditor...............................................Kit Guyatt Photography...................................John Lord Associate Producers .. Elizabeth Backhouse, Sound Recordist................. Laurie Fitzgerald MURCHESON CREEK Camera ......................................... John Lord, David Moore Graphics ................................. Lee Whitmore Ivan Gaal ProductionManager ............... Patrick Clayton Running Time ....................................26 mins D irector.....................................Terry Bourke Budget................................................... $4300 Production Lighting ..........................................John Lord Distributor.......................Channel 9 Network Assistant............ Rosanne Andrews-Baxter Laboratory ....................................... Colorfilm Colour Process................................. Eastman Production Company.............................. CashHarmon Stills Photographer................................. AnneMcLeod Original Screenplay ... .Elizabeth Backhouse Progress ..................................... Final Editing Executive Producer .....................Bill Harmon Synopsis: "A film about the prisoners in NSW Art Director........................................ VivienneMehes Photography.......................Wally Fairweather Producer................................. Ross Hawthorn Camera O perator................... Robert Diggins jails . . . who they are . . . how they got there . . .

Set Designer ...................................Bob Daily Associate Producer ................... Kevin Powell Camera Assistant.................... Geoff McKell why they are beginning to demand their Music Director............................... FranciscusHenri Production Accountant ... .Hellen Rutherford Colour Process........................Eastmancolor rights . . .”

E ditor........................................................ IvanGaal Assistant Directors...............................PatrickClayton, Sound E d ito r........................................RobertFrancis Production Designer .................... Tony Tripp Paul Seto Editors....................................... David Moore, Continuity .................................Anne McLeod Screenplay................................................BobCaswell THE REEF Sound Recordist.......................... Ron Brown Hugh Kitson Photography............................................. AlanGrice Sound Re-recordist ................. David Hughes Assistant E ditor........................... Karen Crisp 2nd Unit Photographer...........................KeithLoone D irector...................................................

John Heyer Mixer ......................................... Bob Gardner Continuity ..............Rosanne Andrews-Baxter Camera Operator ................Frank Hammond Production Company...............................JohnHeyer Titles & Graphics .......................Des Bunyon Make-up ...................................... Elise Young Lighting ........................................ Derek Neal Film Company Cast: Max Gilles, Bill Garner, Tony Taylor, Joe Sound Recordist.................... Kevin Kearney Colour Process........................ Eastmancolor Bolza, Helen Hamilton, Bob Thornycroft, Boom Operator............................................A.Smith(for the Australian Conservation Foundation) Stills Photographer...................................ChicStringer Executive Producer ...........

Garfield Barwick Robert Meldrum, Jackie Kiran.

Grips ........................................ David Chelva, Set Designer ................................Barry Adler Producer..................................................JohnHeyer Jeremy Robbins, Length .................................................1600 ft M usic.......................................................SvenLibaek Associate Producers ................ Steve Domm, Running Time ....................................50 mins Enid Chelva E dito r........................................................ RonWilliams Alison Domm Budget................................................ $17,000 Gaffer-........................................ Darryl Binning Sound Editor .......................Tomash Pokorny General Assistants................Helen Gregory, Production Assistants .......Peter Lothringer, Progress ........................................... Shooting Continuity .................Margaret-Rose Dunphy Gordon Cox •Synopsis: Two dedicated street performing ar­ Laura Chelva, Make-up . . . . t ....................... Rena Hoffmanis Screenplay and Research ..Michael Noonan, tists’ journey to ‘fame’ and to eventual exploita­ June Richardson Chief G rip ....................

Pat Nash Cast: John Adam, Alan Cassell, Faith Clayton, John Heyer tion by people whose business is to use and Sound Recordist ..............................Tim Lloyd Jenny McNae, Leith Taylor, Robert van Aerial Photography ............... Andrew Fraser abuse old and new images.

Sound Re-recordist ................... Peter Fenton Mackelenburg, Richard W illiam s, Pat Underwater Photography......................... RonTaylor, Mixer ..........................................Peter Fenton Valerie Taylor Skevington.

Boom Operator....................................... JohnFranks TO SHOOT A MAD DOG Photography .......................... Andrew Fraser, Running Time ...................................70 mins Titles........................................................... HalHolman Russell Boyd, Director.................................................. DavidElfick Budget...............................................$30,000 Cast: Mark Edwards, Sandra Lee Paterson, Greg Hunter, Distributor.................................................BEF Progress ...................... ............Answer Print Gordon McDougall, Abigail, Lew Luton, Alan Hewison Production Company............... Voyager Films Synopsis: An old man wishes his son to take Rowena Wallace, Keith Lee, Phillipa Baker, Microphotography .....................Peter Parkes Producer...................................... David Elfic over the family farm. His daughter feels that the Cornelia Frances, Dennis Miller.

Colour Process........................Eastmancolor Photography.................................. G. Hunter, farm should belong to her. In ensuing conflict, Running Time ...................................73 mins P. Viskorich unknown facts concerning the death of a farm Unit Secretaries........................Gwen Oatley, Progress ................................. In TV Release . labourer emerge.

Erica Hayle, Colour Process......................... Eastmancolor Virginia Moore M usic......................................... Patrick Flynn Synopsis: Mystery-drama about a young Special Effects.....................................-.PeterNewton E ditor......................................... A. Beauman man’s return to his home town to look after his M usic.......................... Ludwig v. Beethoven, father’s medical practice.

Sound E d ito r...............................................L.,Sullivan Herbert Markes Assistant E ditor......................... .. .L.'Sullivan E ditor......................., ............. Peter Maxwell Sound Recordist.....................

M. Read MUSIC FILMS Sound Recordists......................................JimHarron, Narrator.....................................Philippe Mora t John O’Connell Stunts.............................................Grant Page Executive Producer..................................RossCampbell Narrator................................................ JamesDibble Cast: Mad Dog Morgan cast and crew Production Manager __ Gabriella Batchelor Scientific Adviser .......................Frank Talbot Running Time ....................................24 mins Production Co-ordinator............ Ross Lukeis Collaborator on Research Budget.......: ......................................... $6000 Screenplay........................ Maree Teychenne & Sreenplay........................................MichaelNoonan Progress ........................................ In Release Colour Process........................ Eastmancolor Consultants........................ Prof. Y. T'Chang, Synopsis: The inside story on the making of Technical Adviser................... Lorraine Milne Prof. D.T. Anderson, Mad Dog Morgan. Hopper madness on loca­ Progress ..........................................Research _ S. Domm, tion with laughs, action and stunts.

Synopsis: A series of three 10 minute films ex­ A. Domm ploring the many facets of music today. Music Cast: As explorers’ voices: Ralph Cotterel, as a form of expression, as a career, as an in­ Alastair Duncan, Tim Elliott, Alan Faulkiner, dustry, as a cultural heritage. Designed for Ken Goodlet, Daniel Guilbaud, Nigel Lovell, primary and post-primary students.

Ronald Morse, Tony Wager.

Processing ...................................... Colorfilm NOW YOU SEE ME, Studios.......... %......................Supreme Films NOW YOU DON’T Running Time ...................................77 mins For details of the following 16mm films see the Progress ........................................ In Release previous issue: Production Company ... .Mantis Wildlife Films Include your next project in our Synopsis: The story of the Great Barrier Reef Producers................................ Densey Clyne, Aboriginal Education Jim Frazier production survey listings. Send your from man’s first positive awareness of It, to his Bill & Co. realisation that it Is a major world wonder of Script and S to ry ..................... Densey Clyne production details and stills to: A Calendar of Dreamings great value to Australia and mankind. If the Photography................................. Jim Frazier Circus Reef is to survive the impact of man, all of Colour Process.......................... Ektachrome City Blues man’s activities on it must be proportioned to Production Survey Stills Photographer..................Densey Clyne Confirmation the Reef’s capacity to absorb them.

M usic.......................................Derek Strahan Cinema Papers Islands in the Stream Editors..................................... Densey Clyne, Jeremy and Teapot 143 Therry St., Jim Frazier, Lost Hope Cinetel Productions Life Dreams Melbourne, 3000

PRODUCERS, DIRECTORS and PRODUCTION COMPANIES

Phone: (03) 329 5983 Deadline for next issue is late November.

162—Cinema Papers, September

Listen to the Lion My Name’s Mick The Magic Coin Queen New Games The Singer and the Dancer Towards a Balanced View W. Anchor and W. Ann Kerr

Above: Max Gillies in Soft Soap, a Horizontal Films Production.

PRODUCTION SURVEY FILM AUSTRALIA

CHANGES IN THE OFFICE A PERSONAL MATTER WILL YOU JOIN

SOUTH AUSTRALIAN FILM CORPORATION

ART

D irector.......................................Justin Milne Distributor.......................................... S.A.F.C. Production Company....... Newfilms Pty. Ltd. D irector.......................................... Keith Gow Executive Producer ..............Malcolm Smith Distributor..................................................FilmAustralia Screenplay................................. Winnie Pelz Camera O perator................. Geoff Simpson Production Company............... Film Australia Colour Process.........................Eastmancolor Production Company................................FilmAustralia E dito r.............................................Justin Milne Producer......................................Don Murray Associate Producer ................... Ron Hannam Continuity ...................................... Lucy Clark Sound Recordist.......... Soundtrack Australia Production Manager ................. Gerald Letts Production Co-ordinator................Su Doring Mixer ............................ Soundtrack Australia S c rip t..............................................Keith Gow Sponsor........................ S.A. Dept, of Further Education Photography................................... Ross King Synopsis: A film about two artists living in Camera O perator........................Tony Gailey Colour Process.............. Eastmancolor 7247 Mount Gambier and their involvement and in­ teraction within the community.

E dito r...........................................Ian Weddell Continuity ..................................... Lyn Gailey Sound Recordist.......................... Bob Hayes DUNES Mixer ................................. Julian Ellingworth D irector............................'. . . . Ron Saunders G affer...................................................CharlesDonald Distributor..........................................S.A.F.C. Running Time ................................3x10 mins Production Company.......... S-M Productions Gauge ..................... ............................16 mm Executive Producer ................ Malcolm Otten Progress ........................................ In Release Producer................................. Malcolm Smith Synopsis: Discussion starting films to be used Production Manager ..............David London within the Australian Council for Trade Union Screenplay ..............................Ron Saunders Training.

Photography.................Edwin Scragg A.C.S. Artwork ................................. Jennifer Zadow E dito r.....................................Andrew Prowse A CHORD FOR VOICES Sound Recordist......... Soundtrack Australia.

Cast: Kahil Jureidini, Michael Moody, Allan D irector................................. Philip Robertson Andrews, John Lowe.

Distributor................................................. FilmAustralia Sponsor....................... Dept, of Environment, Production Company................................FilmAustralia Housing and Community Development.

Producer............................................ MalcolmOtten Synopsis: The aim is to give 10-14 year olds a Production Manager ................... Roy Bissell conceptual idea of coastal sand dunes and S c rip t..................................... Philip Robertson show various interests in conflict. (Made for Photography........................................ AndrewFraser Film Australia).

Cameramen ................................. Peter Levy, George Lowe Colour Process................ Eastmancolor 5247 FOOD FROM THE RELUCTANT EARTH E dito r.....................................Philip Robertson D irector................................... Edwin Scragg Sound Editor ............................. Gai Coleman Distributor................................. ........ S.A.F.C. Sound Recordist.......................................MaxHensser Executive Producer .......... Lesley Hammond Mixer ...........................................George Hart Screenplay ...................................David Tiley Running Time .................................... 20 mins Running Time ...................................20 mins Gauge .................................................35 mm Sponsor...................................Department of Progress .........................................In Release .

Agriculture Synopsis: Laying of the telephone cable from Synopsis: Demonstrates the Ley dry-land Cairns to Port Moresby. farming system used in South Australia, and its results.

LANGUAGE AT TWELVE D irector.......................................Karl McPhee Distributor..................................................FilmAustralia INTEGRATION Production Company................................ FilmAustralia D irector...................................... Justin Milne Producer................................Tom Manefield Distributor..........................................S.A.F.C. S c rip t.........................................................KarlMcPhee Production Company.......Newfilms Pty. Ltd. Photography........................................ AndrewFraser Executive Producer ..............Malcolm Smith Colour Process................ Eastmancolor 7247 Producer............................... Geoff Simpson E dito r........................................ Mark Waters Screenplay................................. Brian Bergin Sound Recordist........................Carlo Tarchi Interviewer ...................................David Tiley Running Time .................................... 20 mins Colour Process.......................... Ektachrome Gauge ................................................ 16 mm E dito r..........................................Justin Milne Progress ...............................

In Release Sound E d ito r................Soundtrack Australia Synopsis: The language behaviour of 12 yearContinuity ............................... Suzanne Beal olds.

Chief G rip ..................................... Trevor Ellis Sound Recordist.......... Soundtrack Australia MOTORCYCLE SAFETY Mixer ............................ Soundtrack Australia Directors................................................. PeterJohnson, Narrator...................................... Brian Bergin Tony Hansen Running Time ......................................24 min Distributor..................................Film Australia Sponsor........................ S.A. Dept, of Further Production Company................ Film Australia Education Producer................................................. PeterJohnson Synopsis: Presenting the present philosopy of Production Managers ................Roy Bissell, the E ducation D epartm ent, tha t the Mike Rubetzki neighbourhood school should be for as many Photography................................. Ross King, Andrew Fraser of the children of the neighbourhood as possible.

Colour Process................ Eastmancolor 7247 E ditors................................Alan Lake F.P.S., Warwick' Hercus Mixer ................................. Julian Ellingworth Running Time .............................. 5x10 mins.

Gauge ................................................. 16 mm Progress ........................................ In Release Synopsis: Short films on the aspects of motor­ cycle safety.

AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION

MOMENTS IN TIME

D irector................................... Ron Saunders New projects given financial support during Production Company__ Film Makers (Aust.) the period March-June 1976: Pty. Ltd. Executive Producer ................Peter Dlmond Script Development Production Manager ................... Peggy Limb Pre-Production Approvals: Screenplay ..............................Ron Saunders Photography.............................................. RonLowe MARCH Colour Process........................Eastmancolor E dito r............................ .TrevorTim EllisPurcell Project: Saddle Sore and Blue Sound Recordist................David Hursthouse $5000 Running Time ................................... 10 mins Synopsis.A museum is a place for observation Russell Karel and study, where the exhibits preserve Project: Lasseter’s Reef moments in time. $3000 Des Owen Project: Rainbow Joe MIGRANT ENGLISH $500 Distributor .........................................S.A.F.C. David Elfick / Voyager Films P/L Executive Producer ..............Malcolm Smith Project: Voyager Package Screenplay ............................Terry Jennings $19,450 Running Time ..............; ...................20 mins Sponsor.....................................S.A. Dept, of APRIL Education Synopsis: The problem of children whose first Michael Thornhill / Edgecliff Films language is not English.

Project: The F.J. Holden $3925

ORGANISATION Distributor..........................................S.A.F.C. Executive Producer ..............Malcolm Smith Screenplay ..............................Ron Saunders Sponsor.....................................S.A. Dept, of Education Synopsis: The aim of the film is to sell the con­ cept of participative management to head­ masters and to give them some idea of the necessary skills involved in implementing it.

Sandy Harbutt / Hedon Productions P/L Project: Drums of Mer $5000 Brian Faull Project: The Prospector $4900 Samson Productions P/L Project: Samson Package $44,500 JUNE

STICKS AND STONES . . .

Director...................................... Max Pepper Distributor.......................................... S.A.F.C. Production Company ... Pepper Audio Visual Executive Producer .......... Lesley Hammond Screenplay .......................... Brenton Whittle, Murray George Running Time ................................... 20 mins Sponsor...............................,S.A. Police Dept.

Synopsis: Aimed at young people aged approximately 15-17 years. Shows the role and variety of the work of the police, with emphasis on the role they play in every day life in the community.

TOWARDS A BALANCED VIEW D irector...................................... Brian Bergin Production Company . . . .Bosisto Productions Executive Producer ................Peter Dimond Screenplay.................................Brian Bergin Photography............................. Brian Bosisto Colour Process.......................... Ektachrome Mixer ...................................... Trevor Wilkey Running Time ...................................18 mins Synopsis: The scars made by quarry operators on the Adelaide hills face zone are of concern to environmentalists. This film presents the viewpoint of all parties associated with the issue.

WATERMAN D irector................................... Ron Saunders Production Company.......... S-M Productions Executive Producer ................Peter Dimond Screenplay.............................. Ron Saunders Photography................. Edwin Scragg A.C.S. Colour Process........................Eastmancolor Editor . , L.................................. Justine Milne Running Time ................................1 8 mins Synopsis: Waterman, an engaging character dressed in an orange wetsuit, uses super­ natural powers to demonstrate the principles behind the management of South Australia’s water resources to Doris, an Adelaide house­ wife. .

Richard Franklin Project: Race to the Yankee Zephyr $6070 Lee Robinson Project: King’s Way $6500 Wayne Moore Project: The Swagman $1500 Production Approvals: MARCH

John McCallum Productions P/L Project: Waratah Park $263,456 Peter Maxwell Project: Mutiny at Castle Forbes $225,000 APRIL

Crawford Productions P/L Project: Bluestone Boys $288,000 Vic Martin Productions P/L Project: Sharks & Shipwrecks $37,600 JUNE

Fitzgerald Enterprises/Trenchard Productions Project: Deathcheaters $50,000 Gemini Productions Project: Gemini Telefeature Package $180,000 “ Distribution Approvals:

Marcus Cooney Project: The Mug $6254

Cinema Papers, September— 163

«* »’S H 'S ’s s « S S £ ■ *" « **■ ^usva"an

Andrew Pike In his day, Here McIntyre was possibly the best known and most widely respected ‘show­ man’ in the Australian film trade. For 40 years he served as managing director of Universal Pic­ tures in Australia and was the constant excep­ tion to cries that the “yes-men” of American companies were stifling Australian initiatives, especially in production.

As historical perspective on earlier decades of the Australian film industry improves, McIntyre emerges clearly as a most remarkable figure, perhaps the most consistent and effective patron of Australian film production that the industry has ever seen.

Born in 1890 in Sydney, Hercules Christian McIntyre got his first job as an office boy in a shipping company, earning five shillings a week.

His two brothers, Gus and Hughie (actually Augustus and Hughlyn, though they never answered to these names), were working on the Panama Canal construction when an attempt was made to naturalize all of the workers as Americans. They resigned and went north.

Passing through New York, they witnessed the enormous popularity of the early Biograph machines and invested in one which they brought back to Australia. They toured the bush of New South Wales in a horse-drawn wagon, but failed to make a living. However, with backing from an aunt, they set up a tent in Walker St., North Sydney, and began screening films there. Here, years younger than his brothers, worked as cashier, collecting the money each night and keeping the books. Gradually the careers of the brothers developed with the young industry: Here became a film buyer, both for McIntyre’s Pictures and for the city theatres of the famous Señora Spencer, and later he joined Paramount as a salesman; Hughie went on to form Haymarket Theatres Ltd (now part of the Greater Union Organization), and Gus set up Broadway Theatres and developed it into a small chain of cinemas. In 1920, Here accepted an offer to become the Australian representative of Universal Pictures, and he held the position of managing director until his retirement in *The author acknowledges the assistance, of Ken G. Hall in preparing this article.

164—Cinema Papers, September

January 1960. He died in February 1976 at the age of 86.

From the beginning, McIntyre was never sub­ servient to the American head office: he showed that he saw himself as an independant business­ man who happened to have the Universal franchise. He would openly disobey instructions from head office if he felt he knew better.

In 1920, soon after he took on the agency, he was instructed to curb staff and salaries and cut office expenses, but he boasted that he broke all of these commandments immediately and within months had increased the company’s weekly gross “from £700 to £4800” .

For 30 years he offered a vital distribution and publicity service to Australian producers: he was ready to take on any film, regardless of its quality, provided he felt there was a chance to make money from it. Many badly-made ‘quickies’ received far more energetic promotion than they deserved through his office, along with the more worthy and respectable productions which occasionally came his way. Frank Thring, the M cDonagh sisters, Jack Percival, A. R. Harwood, Charles Chauvel, Mel Nichols, the McCreadie brothers, Lee Robinson, all had features released by McIntyre from the 1930s through to the decline of local production in the 1950s.

Short films produced by federal and state government film units also received strong promotion from McIntyre. If an exhibitor refus­ ed to screen the films, McIntyre was known to approach the local mayor to help him make the exhibitor more conscious of his civic respon­ sibilities.

Most remarkably as the agent of an American company, McIntyre was a firm supporter of the producer-director, Charles Chauvel: in addition to distribution services, he helped substantially in the financing of Chauvel’s two most impor­ tant films, 40,000 Horsemen and Sons of Matthew. McIntyre personally paid the £5000 needed by Chauvel to shoot the famous Light Horse charge across the desert; then, when the sequence had been edited, he used it as the ‘shop window’ to secure guarantees of exhibition from Hoyts Theatres and to raise the remaining production finance. ’ « In 1946, McIntyre achieved the seemingly im­ possible when He persuaded Norman Rydge (the

conservative managing director of Greater Union Theatres who was never a willing sup­ porter of local production) to invest in the joint production of Universal and Greater Union of Chauvel’s Sons of Matthew.

The film was an epic about a pioneering fami­ ly which Chauvel insisted on filming on location in the mountains and jungles of southern Queensland. Bedevilled by production dif­ ficulties, the budget soared, but McIntyre retain­ ed his faith in Chauvel (Rydge on the other hand recalled how he tossed a coin at one stage to decide whether he would continue to support the project).

Although the film took more than two years to complete and cost an unprecedented £120,000, McIntyre’s judgement was vindicated when, like 40,000 Horsemen before it, the film became a major box-office success in Australia and did very well in Britain.

McIntyre was curiously quiet about his sup­ port for Australian films; unlike Stuart Doyle who had championed production at Cinesound in the early 1930s, he never characterized himself as a producer. He was not an artist but a businessman. He was keenly aware that some­ times the Australian public would come in greater numbers to see a local film than they would for the latest American blockbuster. As a distributor, he saw it as his proper business to promote Australian films for their market potential; and he was less directly concerned with any altruistic motive of establishing a con­ tinuously productive industry or giving Australians a screen identity.

As a showman, McIntyre was a vigorous and resourceful publicist, though U niversal’s product seldom represented the best of Hollywood. He recalled that he first learnt to throw all his energy into publicity when a western with William S. Hart was failing in a Sydney theatre: McIntyre grabbed a hat and a gun and stormed up and down the street waving the gun and haranguing the crowd about the greatness of the film. He was a big man physical­ ly (195 ems and 108 kg), and his persuasiveness was considerable: figures for the film rose dramatically.

He had enough confidence in his own showmanship to take a mediocre film like Mother’s Millions (1931), which had failed in its

HERC M cI n t y r e

PARIS SCI-FI FESTIVAL

John Whale's Frankenstein (1931).

first Sydney release, organize a new publicity campaign for it and re-release it in the same city with spectacular box-office results.

A m ong show m en, p erh ap s his best remembered promotion was for James Whales’ Frankenstein (1931) with Boris Karloff. In the capital cities McIntyre and his team organized a street parade with giant monsters and floats con­ taining coffins and an operating theatre where doctors ‘created’ life. In Melbourne, where in­ street advertising was banned by local regulations, he merged the Frankenstein floats with a students’ parade and completed the route before questions were asked. Elsewhere, he boosted the film with first-aid stations in theatre foyers, well-publicized previews for church leaders (to give the film ‘respectability’) and a series of press articles by academics about the creation of life, as well as the more predictable gimmicks such as free gifts, banners on trams,

‘sandwich men’ and flagpole displays.

Today, this sort of ‘pressure selling’ has been largely replaced by television advertising, but in his day McIntyre was a pioneer showman and helped to expand the promotional resources of film publicists. In the 1930s, his style of ex­ travagant ballyhoo was an essential part of the Hollywood glamour that fed the fantasies of the film-going public.

McIntyre’s personality matched both his physical size and name, and he was a vigorous speaker, always capable of rousing enthusiasm in his sales teams and winning their long-term loyalty and affection. His closest friend and colleague at Universal was Dan Casey who worked for decades as his general sales manager in Sydney. Perhaps their proudest protege was A1 Daff, who progressed from a minor position as a salesman in their Melbourne branch to become Universal’s general manager in the Far

East, and later president of Universal Inter­ national in Hollywood.

The original contract which McIntyre made with Universal was something of an error of judgement on Universal’s part, for it gave McIn­ tyre a percentage of all sales made in Australia.

In 1920, when the deal was made, Universal’s grosses amounted to only a few hundred pounds.

Within months, the pounds became thousands, but McIntyre was never selfish with his earnings.

Although he invested heavily in a cattle property in the Inverell district of New South Wales, which his wife, Nell, had inherited, other large sums were directed back into the film trade.

Some he invested in production with Chauvel, but most remarkably in the 1930s he handed over a large proportion of his commission to es­ tablish a provident fund for his staff in Australia: He believed in financial incentives for employees, and within 10 years the fund had nearly £200,000 to dispense to retiring staff members.

During World War 2, he contributed to the war effort with a customary grand gesture, by sending new films to army camps in Australia, Papua-New Guinea and ‘the islands’, usually before the films had been released in Sydney. He made no charge to the armed services for this contribution to morale, and set an example which other distributors followed only much later. In 1944, Universal called him to New York where he was accorded high praise for his initiative from both the film trade and the U.S. armed services.

Showmen in the grand style of Here McIntyre are rare: in the U.S. he may have become another great Hollywood figure of the calibre of Zukor or Laemmle. In 1929, in fact, he was offered a senior management post in the American head office of Universal, but turned it down to persevere with his empire in Australia.

By choosing to remain he became very much a big fish in a small pond and made a positive and exemplary contribution to film in this country. If his initiative and energy were matched by more people at the head of the film trade today there would certainly be less need for our filmmakers’ energy-consuming pre-occupations with the business of distribution and exhibition, and our film scene would be a good deal more colourful and adventurous. ★

Science Fiction Cinema

Continued from P. 154 The Creeping Flesh is notable for the

remarkable complexity of the themes F rancis o rc h e s tra te s w ith in the scrupulously observed demands of the genre. Peter Cushing plays a concerned scientist who finds that he has managed to isolate the physical presence of pure evil and thereby in envisioning a world divested of evil, finds himself falling into the sin of hybris. Christopher Lee, with suave conviction, plays his evil half­ brother, a psychiatrist who experiments on his caged mental patients ostensibly for the furtherance of human knowledge, but in fact for reasons of personal am­ bition.

As the story unwinds the position of the two men is revealed as far from an­ tithetical as it at first appears. Behind Cushing’s superficially disinterested position lies a personal tragedy: the nymphomania, insanity and death in a mental home of his wife. And as he ac­ cidently sets about, in effect, reviving the very spirit of evil he wishes to allay, his daughter sets about reviving the caged and concealed memory of her mother.

Gradually the protective cage in which Cushing attempts to hold his daughter (she is kept in ignorance of her mother’s true nature), and Lee’s cages of restraint, are revealed to be interchangeable.

More ripples of ambiguity extend out from the fact that through the person of the mother, In particular, notions of sex­ uality, madness and evil are shown inex­

tricably bound together. The film ends with a chilling Mabuse-like plot twist in which Cushing, now mad, is shown oc­ cupying one of Lee’s cages.

If From Beyond the Grave lacked the sense of personal and serious concern that marked Francis’ film, nevertheless it did offer an entertaining and effective group of tales in which various perennial British preoccupations, such as the inescapability of the past and the concept of service, were milked of their fearful possibilities. The first tale boasts an es­ pecially convincing performance from David Warner as the unwitting instru­ ment of the past’s revival, purchasing a haunted mirror to which he becomes totally prey. The intrusion of the past, with its obscene and cannibalistic demands, into a superficially ordered present is rendered with unmistakeable force, and the reduction of Warner’s pristine apartm ent to a scene of realistically bloodsoaked carnage proves a fitting emblem for the increasing dis­ order of his mind. The second episode is more predictable, but features a neat climactic turn of the screw and a fair d e lin e a tio n o f_ th e n ig h tm a ris h possibilities latent within suburban semi­ detached consciousness. It also featured a genial performance from Diana Dors as a winningly sluttish wife. The final episode visited the supernatural upon a denizen of commuter-belt living, played

by Ian Carm ichael, entertainingly enough.

As a whole, the film shows that when Amicus take some care over their productions and manage to get hold of an intelligent script, this by Robin Clark and Raymond Chistodoulou marks quite a high point, they encourage even a nor­ mally less than inspired director like Kevin Connor to rise to the occasion.

The conventional ploy of hingeing a tale of the supernatural around a character displaced from his/her usual environ­ ment, was used somewhat obliquely in Waris Hussein’s The Possession of Joel Delaney, the sharpest attempt I have seen to invest the theme of possession — here cross class and race — with political overtones. In it, a rich and hip young New Yorker (played by Perry King) given to making forays into the Puerto Rican ghetto areas of New York, finds his per­ sonality invaded by that of a disturbed Puerto Rican kid, and race realities and paranoia erupt into the well-ordered and cocoon-like existence of Joel Delaney and his chic sister (Shirley MacLaine).

Intriguingly, we are given a mesh of hints that all is less than perfect with their brother and sister relationship, but the script and direction are welcomely cir­ cumspect here, lending the whole shades of ambiguity that deepen and ex­ tend the film’s frame of reference.

If The Possession of Joel Delaney had the kind of bite noticeably absent from the brace of television films and episodes from series also included in the program, few other American films were able to

steer sufficiently clear of either self­ indulgence or the sheerly formular to make much impact. Little of Curtis’ work really backed up his cult status, but Trilogy of Terror (three variations on the theme of sexual repression and its con­ sequences) proved remarkably convinc­ ing with tour de force performances in all three episodes from Karen Black.

In Julie she plays a supposedly fusty college professor who secretly entices young men to their doom, while allowing them the illusion that they are in fact ex­ ploiting her. In Amelia she plays the vic­ tim of a dominating mother who is finally possessed by the spirit of an African hunting fetish. The bulk of the tale is taken up with the horrific struggle between Amelia and the voodoo doll, a malevolent, if tiny, bundle of pure hate.

Miliicent and Theresa proved more predictable with its theme of dual per­ sonality, but still maintained a sharp effectiveness. The tightness of Trilogy of Terror only showed up by comparison the indulgently rambly scripts that finally killed such promising projects as Bud Townsend’s The Folks at Red Wolf Inn, a tale of cannibalism, with a superb perfor­ mance from Linda Gillin, that would have made a great short, or Silent Knight, Bloody Night, that in the end was remarkable only for allowing us a glimpse of Mary Woronow, Candy Darl­ ing and various other Warholites, while Wiliima Castle's Shanks indulged Marcel Marceau far too extendedly. ★ Cinema Papers, September—165

GUO FILM DISTRIBUTORS proudly presents MICHAEL KLINGER „ x w , PETER HUNT »

t>/STK\^'

B A R B A R A PARKINS IA N HOLM RENE KOLLDEHOFF Music con^xsedandcorxJuct^ by MAURICE

JARRE Soeenpbyby STANLEY PRICE, ALASTAIR REID arxl WILBUR SMITH Based on the bookof the same titleby W ILBUR SMITH

produced b/

MICHAEL KLINGER Directed byPETER HUNT technicolor®b\navision*

FOR AUSTRALIA WIDE RELEASE

PURE S John O’Hara Bert Deling’s film, Pure S, has been assailed by those who see it as an encourage­ ment to drug takers, and equally attacked by those who regard It as a misplaced attack on methadone treatment.

Melbourne Herald film critic, Andrew McKay, in a notoriously rocky review, described the film as “the most evil’’ he had seen. But Pure S certainly doesn’t present drug taking in any attractive or reasonable light, certainly not after you have watched the practised negligence of the seventh or eighth syringe cutting into scarred arms.

And the attack on methadone treatment comes at the end of the film in what appears to be an anti-climax, an attempt to stitch together different levels of significance.

The most striking aspects of the film, though, are not the rights and wrongs of its pictures of drug takers, but the extraor­ dinary intensity of the world it images, the obsessive, fragmentary bursts of energy am ong its players, p articu larly G ary Waddell, who drives through the film like a bolt of electricity. Everything is speeded up under the desperate urge for drugs, for one more hit, as the film takes us through one night’s search for pure shit. The characters gabble at each other, rage and swear and collapse as they plot intricate and abortive schemes to get the drugs. The backgrounds change in quite sudden and extravagant ways as though one shade of nightmare gives way to another.

There is no necessary connection between scenes and episodes as they tumble over each other. The night-long jaunt does follow some pattern, but it’s the changes, the disconnec­ tions between events and within conver­ sations that remain most vividly in the mind.

This impression of lunatic speed and despair is reinforced by the half-lit scenes of night chases, the instant and precarious grip that all the ch aracters seem to have on themselves and their emotions. As the group of junkies cruise the streets in a FJ Holden, a car emerges from the darkness, loaded with toughs who hurl beer cans against the win­ dows, shout and gesticulate while the cars veer off and together again.

Tom Cowan’s photography reflects exact­ ly the splintering horror and lurid adolescent fantasy of this world of ancient cars, perpetual highs, miserable, scrounging poverty, as the group’s efforts are absorbed by the search for narcotics.

The high point, if one can call it that, of their foraging for drugs comes in the raid on a chemist’s shop. This is carried out in a high speed, jerky sequence that is funny in a slap­ stick, heedless fashion. Two separate groups find themselves on the roof of the shop together, swearing at each other, bungling their way down into the building, scrambling about in the absurd confusion of roles. The police break up this attempted robbery and the sequence ends, or appears to, with the original group racing away from the scene on foot and collapsing in a shelter in a nearby park.

This progression reflects the style and structure of the film: crazy bursts of energy as images come together from the gloom, form some momentary recognizable pattern and split apart again. The process is like some kind of uncontrollable fission. This is a remarkable achievement, but one that is less impressive the second time around. And there are built-in problems for the film­

Cruising the-streets in an FJ, looking for pure shit. Bert Deling’s Pure S. maker in organizing and unifying this lunacy-saturated style.

At the beginning, Bert Deling seems to have decided to go for the impression the film creates so strongly: that it is not a narrative picture and does not present any sort of easily accessible or coherent story line; and that it is not an entertainment in the form that audiences might expect. And, interestingly, the ending illustrates the same (although in rather a different way).

Together these raise the question: How does one create some kind of formal coherence out of a momentary, fitful and recurring desperation? And especially, how does a director relate the life-style founded on the incessant search for drugs to the habits of filmgoers and the expectations of the audiences for entertainment?

It is a difficult problem, and the film, for all the inventiveness and energy of its best moments, doesn’t come near solving it. In fact, the film opens with scenes of indifferent acting in a department store where several young people are attempting to get off with toys and other irrelevant objects.

It is hard to see just why these sequences begin the film, and the stilted acting rein­ forces an immediate sense of uncertainty or perhaps uninvolvem ent. As the film develops, this impression of a central lack of direction becomes stronger, and eventually Pure S appears like an exercise in in­ coherence. This feeling is created partly through the editing: e.g. the cuts, say, from a shot of an FJ travelling along a freeway in the late afternoon sunlight to the night-time, then to a perpendicular shot down a stairwell.

Some effects seem contrived, like the se­ quence of the Holden passing through a gigantic car-wash with monstrous brooms

and brushes and tentacles. And this scene cuts to a shot of a couple lying on a bed in a complacent stupor. The change in pace is too abrupt, and the effect is less one of dis­ connection than of confusion.

The dialogue, too, draws on thin and repetitive interchanges. These are sometimes comic in the bluntness and bewilderment they register, but often the conversations become tedious. There are these brief segments of snapped-out dialogue: “ Is he a friend?” “ Is he cool?” “ He’s a bit heavy —- owns a couple of massage parlours.” “ Super cool.”

Apart from the jargon of the junkies, there is the plaintive cry of the deprived, as when the girl says to her boyfriend: “ You know we should really give up dope and get into fucking.” It is sad to know that these people suffer in this way, but the deliberately homespun dialogue doesn’t really take us far.

The film’s occasional incoherence is reflected further in the quality of the sound which blurs and drags. Just as the lighting draws shapes from a constant darkness — so that the scene appears to vanish during some frames — so the sound is unspecified, language difficult to understand, and cut about with fragments of rock music. Partly, the film relies on shock effects to establish its high points, or at least to throw certain incidents into sharp relief! So there are repeated shots of people shooting up, scenes of vomit spread across the floor, or sudden bloodied violence during a bust.

These incidents are much less effective in suggesting a constant edginess or anxiety.

They appear too deliberate and contrived, or perhaps, strangely, simply too familiar. The

nagging problem of relating the violence, fear and frenzied excitement of this drug world within any kind of convincing dramatic form becomes critically clear at the end of the film. Max Gillies appears as a benevolent and rather crazy psychiatrist in charge of a drug program. He is interviewed on television and confronted by drug takers.

But this sequence simply reproduces the sur­ face indifference of all such television en­ counters.

The film makes the transition quite abruptly from the self-created style and self­ imagery of the junkies to the bland and mis­ leading formulas of television current af­ fairs. And in the midst of it, Gary Waddell and his friends appear at the drug centre and attempt to force drugs on one of their friends who is being held there.

This is the last, desperate fling to retain some sense of the junkies’ world and im­ agination within the institutions of society.

But it doesn’t come off; Max Gillies looks as though he has been dragged in, the style of his satirical piece clashing with the rest of the film-4§At the end we are left with a good idea, a lot of brilliant improvisation and a mercurial performance from Gary Waddell; but the film itself has collapsed into the chaos it attempted to depict.

PURE S. Directed by Bert Deling. Distributed by

Bob Weiss, Bert Deling. Produced by Bob Weissf Screenplay by John Hooper, David Shepherd, John Tulip, Bob Weiss, Bert Deling, John Laurie, Alison Hill, Ricky Kallenda, Anna Hetherington.

Director of Photography,-Tom Cowan. Edited by John Scott. Music by Spo-de-o-dee, Toads, Red Symons, Martin Arminger. Sound by Lloyd Carrick. Cast: John Laurie, Anne Hetherington, Carol Porter, Gary Waddell. Colour. Length 95 min. Australia, 1975.

Cinema Papers, September— 167

Scene from Philippe Mora’s psychologically and politically sophisticated Mad Dog Morgan.

MAD DOG MORGAN Beryl Donaldson and John Langer The official view of Daniel Morgan’s ex­ ploits is summed up in Charles White’s 1903 History o f Australian Bushranging. While all of the other gentlemen of the road rate praise for some notable acts of decency or bush gallantry, Morgan is singled out as “ one who was a monster rather than a man — who tortured his victims because the sight of their writhings gave him pleasure — who committed murder from sheer wantonness and a tigerish lust for blood” .

Taking this view of Morgan as a central motif, Mora develops a complex multi-level analysis which examines a number of in­ terlocking themes, including the nineteenth century debate on the origin of species, twentieth century assumptions about the in­ stitutional creation of criminality and madness, and colonial class conflict, incor­ porating both the British-Irish tensions and the split between European decadence and the purity of the antipodean “ noble savage” .

In the opening sequence of the film, Mora uses one of the great unmentionables of A ustralian history — the w holesale slaughter of the Chinese on the goldfields — to establish Morgan’s position as an outsider in a brutal and racist society, and to suggest both practical and ideological justification for his psychic alienation and his initiation into bushranging. Caught in a bloody Peckinpah-like massacre while in the Chinese camp, he is identified as a Chinese symphathizer, and forced to flee for his life with nothing but the clothes he is wearing. In order to secure food and blankets, he stages several amateur hold-ups, and is promptly caught, tried, and sentenced to 12 years in prison, two of which are to be spent in irons.

It is the prison experience that begins to psychologically mutilate and dehumanize

Morgan. Branded, brutalized and buggered, he is quickly rendered powerless to defend himself against institutional degradation, and when he is finally released after six years, he stands before the prison governor twitching, hollow-eyed and visibly fearful. In this scene Mora introduces the “origin of species” theme which recurs throughout the film — the governor’s office is filled with skulls, specimens to be used in a lecture to prison officers on “ the relationship between man and apes” .

Mora is doing a number of things in this economical sequence, on the one hand mak­ ing wry comment on the intellectual fashions of the educated middle-classes and the way ideas are used as instruments of oppression, and on the other, introducing an element of foreboding as Morgan confronts his fate as a criminological specimen.

The inevitability of this fate is under­ scored by the language that the authorities use to describe Morgan. It is asserted that “ like most criminals” he is a “throwback to primitive man” ; he is rumoured to have the physical features of a gorilla; and constant reference is made to “the animal Morgan” .

Ultimately this view even enters Morgan’s definition of himself, as in his reference to the bounty hunter as “ Simon the Morgan skinner” .

Frank Thring’s superb characterization of Superintendent Cobham, the arch-opponent of the “ Darwinian thesis” concerning the origins of Morgan’s criminality, provides a suitably ironic statement on the real location of inhumanity in the colony. Nothing quite equals the visual impact of the grotesque Cobham, surrounded by his pampered and over-bred bull terriers and his obsession for taxiderm y, overseeing the pursuit of Morgan. In his final act of desecration, this educated Victorian gentleman, with his theories on the bestiality of the criminal classes, displays a decadent cruelty which could only be human in origin.

In c o n tr a s t to th e c o r r u p t and

claustrophobic artificiality of the ad­ ministrative class, for whom the natural world is merely a source of botanical and zoological curiosities to be collected or stuffed, Mora juxtaposes the open and har­ monious relationship of man to nature em­ bodied in Aboriginal culture. Tracked down and shot as a horse thief, the wounded Morgan escapes into the bush where he is found (not unlike Tonto’s discovery of the Lone Ranger) by the half-caste Billy, who nurses him back to health and teaches him the art of bush survival.

In this natural setting, and through his reliance on Billy, M organ p artially reassembles his shattered psyche and gathers the strength and skills necessary to re-launch his bushranging career and campaign of revenge against his oppressors and enemies.

Perhaps as an inevitable result of a con­ sciousness shaped by a complex urban en­ vironment, Mora lapses into a number of time-worn visual cliches which tend to romanticize and simplify this life within nature. This weakness, however, is offset by the w itty, lig ht-hearted handling of Morgan’s self-conscious transformation into a stylishly competent bushranger. We see him preening himself before a mirror, com­ paring his facial expression to a picture of President Lincoln, earnestly rehearsing his hold-up presentation and phraseology, and even choreographing a planned robbery with Billy’s able assistance.

This preparation pays off in the public arena, and'M organ is soon a man of some repute. The press run stories about his dar­ ing daylight raids, rewards are offered for his capture, he is immortalized in the Melbourne wax works, and a photographer anxiously sets up a rendezvous to take his portrait. The more that is said and written about his exploits, the more he comes to en­ joy and self-consciously act out the role of the bushranging superstar. This belief in his own “ press” contributes in no small way to his ultimate downfall.

The vitriolic condemnation of Morgan, and the singleminded intensity with which he is tracked down, seems as much a response to his irreverence and lack of respect for his “ betters” as it is to his actual crimes. After being unceremoniously knocked from his horse by a boomerang and tauntingly derid­ ed by Morgan, the magistrate of Wagga Wagga becomes one of his most ruthless pursuers, whose devotion to the hunt seems more a reaction to his wounded dignity than to his concern for public safety. Superinten­ dent Cobham declares; “ I want that bastard — it’s bad for all of us when scum like that mock the forces of Her Majesty.”

Mora cleverly uses the soundtrack to satirize the petty pomposity of the colonial bourgeois, whose forays in pursuit of the hounded bushranger are accompanied by ab­ surdly grandiose military music, as out of place in the Australian context as the suit of armour “ worn at Agincourt” in which one of them poses for the photographer. The political basis for the definition of Morgan as a threat to the community is obvious: his deeds have become the stuff of hero-worship among the labouring classes, who feed, clothe and provide him with vital informa­ tion about police movements. He has come to represent a powerful anarchic force which threatens the delicate balance of authority in the colony, and he must therefore be crushed and destroyed.

Morgan, of course, is doomed from the start. While the forces of law and order are the necessary agents of his destruction, it is ultimately his own haunted psyche and his longing for human contact which lead him irrevocably to this end. Like the classic out­ sider of the Western genre, M organ’s feelings about the orderly world of the com­ munity are ambivalent and his desire for revenge is equalled by his need for a sense of belonging and recognition.These conflicting emotions relentlessly draw him away from the security of the bush towards areas of settlement and into the ever-tightening

Frank Thring as the arch-opponent of Darwinism, Superintendent Cobham. Mad Dog Morgan police cordon. He crosses the river into Vic­ toria, a scene evoking both traditional Western imagery and the mythological des­ cent into hell across the River Styx.

Once he enters this new terrain, away from familiar hideouts and escape routes, and with the police rapidly closing in, his psychological disintegration accelerates.

Mora shows us the physical and social land­ scape through the lens of M o rg an ’s mounting paranoia. Tormented by night­ mare images of hell which allow him no rest, the wraith-like Morgan stumbles inexorably towards his death, his drive for revenge giv­ ing way to a realization of his own loss. “ I’ve missed so much of my life, sir” he says to his last captive audience, the squatter MacPherson.

Mad Dog Morgan is a powerful film, remarkable for its complex visual statements and spare use of dialogue. It generates a sense of tension and unease, capturing both the otherworldly foreboding of the bush and the claustrophobia and oppression of human institutions. Without in any way detracting from Philippe M ora’s achievement, it must be said that a large part of the film’s success is due to Dennis Hopper’s betrayal of Morgan which, in its edgy unpredictability, is reminiscent of the best of Brando.

Between them, Mora and Hopper have transcended the cliches of the bushranger myths and created a psychologically and politically sophisticated film.

MAD DOG MORGAN. Directed by Philippe Mora. Distributed by BEF. Produced by Jeremy Thomas. Associate Producer, Richard Brennan.

Production Company, Mad Dog Pty. Ltd. Screenplay by Philippe Mora. Based on the book Morgan the Bold Bushranger by Margaret Carnegie. Director of Photography, Mike Molloy.

Edited by John Scott. Music by Patrick Flynn. Art Direction by Bob Hilditch. Sound by Ken Ham­ mond. Cast: Dennis Hopper, Jack Thompson, David Gulpilil, Frank Tnring, Michael Pate, Wallas Eaton, Bill Hunter, John Hargreaves, Martin Harris, Robin Ramsay, Graeme Blundell.

Eastmancolor. Length 110 min. Australia. 1976.

The Chinese opium den at the goldfields. Mad Dog Morgan.

TAXI DRIVER

TAXI DRIVER John O’Hara With M artin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, violence on screen has become completely detached from any conceivable context.

Violence exists for its own sake, guns have become the erotic accessories of a new love affair and this film’s gory conclusion savages Peckinpah’s controlled, slow motion closeups of bullets lacerating flesh.

M ost of T axi Driver is slow, even monotonous, with a stilted insistence on attempting to pin down significant moments in the life of a frustrated and intense cab driver who hangs around New York in his Yellow cab. But it could be anywhere; the acclaimed vision of New York turns out to be a superficial and clinging indulgence in clever camera tricks and angles, in abrupt and obviously unsettling cutting, and in the use of brilliant colours that glow like tropical fish against blackness.

Much of Robert de N iro’s cruising th r o u g h d o w n - to w n N ew Y o rk is at night, and the streets glow with a kind of blue-green glitter along the crowded roadway. In one shot, taken through the windscreen, he is pictured in his usual tired, brooding slump behind the wheel, and the camera lens reflects a semi-circle of scattered dashes of light. At this point, the artificial attempt to create a sense of beauty and order out of darkness and psychic chaos simply runs the film into the ground.

Throughout the film, Scorsese constantly moves in for slow, dramatic close-ups that have no point beyond their momentary fizzy significance. For example, while De Niro is munching away at the cabbie’s all-nighter, an elaborately dressed negro is seen sitting at the counter. He wears dark glasses and looks vaguely menacing, as he is no doubt meant to. The negro leans forward and drops an Alka-Seltzer tablet into a glass of water. The water foams, and the camera zooms in for a close-up until the entire screen is filled with this expostulating seltzer. Meaning cannot be hacked out of an environment like this, and it is only annoying for an audience to be forced to pay attention to such trifling and gratuitous intentions on the part of the direc­ tor.

The dynamism of the film, if a piece of elaborately over-wound clockwork can be said to go at all, depends at first on a relationship which develops between De Niro and an apparently desirable girl who is working for a presidential candidate. She is played by one of the great contemporary American non-actresses, Cybill Shepherd, who always appears to be preparing for the next scene, or the next film.

Some actresses give the impression of identifying with the character they play, of throwing themselves into the part. Cybill Shepherd always appears to be trying to ex­ tricate herself from her role; her presence suggesting a peculiar kind of withdrawal, as though drama were a matter of forcing appearances.

In this film, she walks with her usual antelopian grace, and doodles nicely, but fails to embody any kind of effective stimulus for De Niro. He introduces himself to her at the campaign office, and then, on their first date, takes her to a skin-flick. She, of course, rejects him completely, and it is difficult to imagine that he had quite as little imagination.

The thrust of the film is to suggest that the development of a psychotic killer, of a would-be presidential assassin, derives from a claustrophobic mix of anxieties, rejection, inarticularcy and painful mental dullness. At no point does it ring true, and the brooding insistence of the fanatical killer develops in a tedious and literal progression of images.

For example, after his rejection by the all­ American presidential aide, De Niro retires 170—Cinema Papers, September

JE SUIS PIERRE RIVERE

to his skeletal room, buys an armoury of guns and practises his shooting techniques.

Scorsese registers his obsession through repeated shots of pistol galleries, of target practice, of defiant posturing by De Niro in front of the mirror at home, and through what seems to me a quite dishonest trick of associating random suggestions. In one par­ ticular scene, De Niro is sitting in front of his television set. He is clenching a Magnum 44 in one hand, spooning what looks like mayonnaise from a ja r held between his legs, and rocking his chair against the packing case that supports the television set. After about a minute, he finally pushes the televi­ sion off the packing case, and it explodes with a flash of fire and great balls of smoke.

To image violence in such carefully set-up ways isn’t to help understand it, but simply to perpetuate facile images that represent, but do no penetrate, an apparent condition of desperate isolation.

At the end, De Niro shoots several people in a graphic, bloody and prolonged sequence of murders. After it is over, the camera tracks slowly back along the corridor in the hotel, down the stairs and along another cor­ ridor, retracing the sequence of corpses.

What fascinates Scorsese here are the wildly-flung patterns of blood on the walls.

And it is this attempt to force meaning from photographing surfaces that betrays the literal and empty significance of this film.

In purpose and effect, the film resembles Michael Winner’s Death Wish, in which Charles Bronson systematically slaughtered muggers, to the enthusiastic approval of audiences. At the end of Taxi Driver, by an irony that the film cannot possibly sustain, or even reasonably account for, De Niro is hailed by press and police as a hero, because the people he murdered were criminals.

There is no horror here because the film has failed to image the kind of corruption that might be necessary for the police and authorities to collude with a crazed taxi driver in this way, especially as he had already come under the notice of the secret service at political rallies.

We see several sequences of speech­ making at rallies, interviews on television, even a discussion with the candidate in De Niro’s cab. Politics is reduced to bland speech-making, inspirational flummery for the millions; and political occasions become an opportunity for the display of armed guards, police and secret service agents. But they are pictured as though Scorsese didn’t know quite how seriously to take them; as though they become part of De Niro’s fatalistic ambitions. And the film trades on the kind of Kennedy hysteria, relying on the spectre of assassination that has been evoked in other places. The fears and uncertainties that are imaged through the film’s use of political occasions are not defined; the relationship between the night world of the taxi driver and the public, spot-lit glare of politics, is never made clear. The sense of a necessary political gesture that one has, say, from Altman’s Nashville, is missing from De Niro’s abortive and ludicrously theatrical attempt to murder the candidate. And the would-be assassin’s helter-skelter dash from the scene mirrors the film’s structure, plung­ ing from one sequence to the next while im­ portant relationships are blurred and broken up. And it’s not enough for the filmmakeMo attempt to ram significance home for the audience through the most literal and direct dialogue. After De Niro has wandered about in a state of confusion for some time, he suddenly says: “ Now I see quite clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction.” This statement has no particular resonance, no obsessive force. We have neither conversion nor repentance. It is, simply, difficult to take seriously, like De Niro’s sad disclaimer, “There has never been any choice for me.”

And Scorsese is quite unable to represent what any possible choices might be like, apart from the descent into madness and murder. His impressions of New York are

no substitute; they are too carefully contriv­ ed to image a world of shadows, steam and gleaming Tights. H is sudden close-ups on brilliant traffic lights, the angled shots of towering skyscrapers, the long focus on gun barrels and blood, all betray a terrifying, literal insistence on appearances. But to suggest that New York is a nightmare and politics a jungle, is to rely on well-worn for­ mulas, tricked out by glossy photography that touches up the easy response.

TAXI DRIVER. Directed by_ Martin Scorsese.

Distributed by Columbia Pictures. Produced by Michael and Julia Phillips. Production Company, Bill/Phillips Productions. Screenplay by Paul Schrader. Director of Photography, Michael Chapman. Edited by Marcia Lucas, Tom Rolf, Melvin Shapiro. Music by Bernard Herrman. Art Direction by Charles Rosen. Sound by Tex Rudolff, Dick Alexander, Vern Poore, Les Lazarowitz, Roger Peitschman. Cast: Robert de Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks, Leonard Harris, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster. Metrocolor. Length 113 min. U.S. 1976.

JE SUIS PIERRE RIVIERE Scott Murray.

“The dreamer can have no desire, fo r he has everything; he is above desire, he is sur­ feited, he is him self the artist creating his life at every hour, guided only by his own in­ spiration.”— Dostoyevski in White Nights The surprise of this year’s Perth Film Festival1 was the astounding first feature by Christine Lipinska, Je Suis Pierre Riviere. In contrast to most of the films which examined societal pressures in cold, polemic ways, Lipinska’s film conveyed great sensitivity and understanding, and an almost in­ expressible sadness.

1835 in the region of Normandy, and a young peasant, Pierre Riviere, assassinates his mother, sister and brother Jules. It is a scene of orchestrated terror, where only the repeated shot of a cleaver falling to the table approaches explicitness. The soundtrack screeches in horror, a masterful contortion of domestic sounds amplified to breakingpoint. Then, unexpectedly, a painful, terrify­ ing scream. The editing is quick and precise, but totally avoids artifice, and one is left quite drained by the oppressiveness of it all.

Riviere leaves home with the intention of surrendering to the police, but his courage is lacking: “ I am a coward” , he cries, slumped by a tree. He then wanders off to lose

himself in a forest, but is haunted by painful memories of childhood, a time when he was forced into isolation by the cruelty of his schoolfriends.

Riviere’s first personal encounter within the forest is with a woodsman, whose hut he comes across. Pierre tells a story to explain his presence and asks for rope to upright his “ tumbled cart” . Immediately, a shadow of death falls over him. Excusing himself abruptly. Riviere leaves clutching the rope.

The scene cuts quickly to a shot of a noose dangling from a tree, but Riviere hesitates and backs away. His mind has demanded death — “ I thought that the time had come to act, that my death would be on everyone’s lips, that by my death I would cover myself in glory” 2 — but his dream of immortality, his superiority, is again not matched with courage. _ Weak from a month in the forest eating only berries and roots, Riviere deliberately provokes people in the hope that they will arrest or denounce him as the murderer.

However, the soldiers and peasants merely react by calling him insane, the irony being that the court later judges him to be otherwise. But Riviere is not sane; nor is he mad: “ A dreamer is not a real human being, but a sort of intermediary creature.” ( White Nights) Or, as Lipinska has described him, “ a displaced person” . This is not only a physical description — the Riviere family has constantly changed home and are, in a sense, socially rootless — but also a philosophical one.

Finally, Riviere is arrested and tried. The court scene, which punctuates the entire film, concludes whith two emotional dis­ plays by the prosecution and defence. The prosecution argues that although Riviere is a threat to law and the concept of family, he is not insane. The defence, naturally, main­ tains he is, and in one continuous, but grip­ ping, 10-minute take, the defence counsellor puts on a display of great showmanship and emotion. The performance, by Francis Huster, is unique because he is able to cleverly suggest what is genuine and what is show, thus making us more aware of the processes of the law Riviere will be unable to escape.

Sentenced to death, Riviere is relieved — the law will do what he has himself been un­ able to do, and thus make just amends for his crime. The law, however, finally does not allow him this “justice” , and commutes his sentence to life imprisonment. The judge cannot believe Riviere’s lack of joy. “ React!” he demands. “ React?” , Riviere

“ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Jacques Spiesser as the murderer, Pierre Riviere. Christine Lipinska’s Je Suis Pierre Riviere

J t SUIS PIERRE RIVIERE

asks. “ How can I react when you have taken away from me what no man has the right to take — my own death?” This scene I find in­ escapably sad, even when recalling it now.

Ultimately, Riviere takes, his own life, and over his hanging corpse echo his words: “ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” 1 am absolute! But the film does not end here, and joyously we see Riviere walking the fields and forests of his home again.

Assuming there can exist an answer, why does Riviere murder most of his family? He claims that he murdered his mother and sister because they made his father’s life un­ bearable. But why the brother Jules? Again, Riviere gives a reason, one which in saying so much about his mind leads us to a fuller, more possible ‘explanation’ of his behaviour.

Had not he killed Jules, his execution for murdering both his mother and sister would have caused his father great grief and con­ tinued suffering. But if he killed Jules, whom his father loved, he would become hated by his father, and hence his death could go unmourned. Thus, his father could live the remainder of his life in peace and happiness.

What beautiful but sad logic. It speaks of a man alone, of a dreamer with little ‘real’ social life. He has retreated into a world where he can become his own hero. He is, after all, just like the dreamers today, of Bresson or Dostoyevski. And if Riviere’s motivation is the grandeur of Bonaparte, to­ day it is merely someone or something else: a poet, a painter, or a culture.

Riviere is a romantic frightened of the world around him, and each successive de­ mand — such as the girl’s exposed shoulder at a time when he feels the passions of sex — only makes him more withdrawn. So, he dreams instead, and that which he wants most is denied. Denial, the blood of the dreamer.

One cannot say Riviere was wrong in withdrawing, after all the possibility of an alternative may never have occurred to him.

For as the pressures of society increase upon us, so decreases our potential or courage for choice.

In Four Nights of the Dreamer, Bresson suggests that the dream overpowers reality and that the reality becomes the dream. And that is the inexpressible sadness of it. Riviere is trapped within his world because things are absolute in it, and choices simple. Thus, he always chooses wisely — his logic allows no other alternative. So, of course he feels superior, with each moment of victory treasured. “ My God, a moment of bliss.

Why, isn’t th a t enough for a whole lifetime?” (White Nights). No, absolutely not. He who believes that it is enough is denying himself the chance that bliss will or can exist again.

The issues and feelings Je Suis Pierre Riviere raises for me are so strong that I perhaps risk overpraising it. Certainly it has weaknesses — the slightly overpaced and confused opening; a music score which is in­ itially at odds with the film’s tone — but, most importantly, it has a genuine under­ standing and love for people such as Riviere.

This is, of course, evident in the performance of Jacques Spiesser who brilliantly captures Riviere’s spirit. His face is simple, gentle; his eyes calm and clear; but within, one senses the passion. •12 1. The Perth Festival will be reviewed in full next issue. It is anticipated that Je Suis Pierre Riviere will be on release shortly.

2. From the journal written by Riviere after his trial and before his death.

JE SUIS PIERRE RIVIERE. Directed by

Christine Lipinska. Production Director, Jacques Poitrenaud. Production Company, Les Films de L’Ecluse. Screenplay by Christine Lipinska, Regis Hanrion. Director of Photography, Jean Monsigny. Edited by Agnes Molinard, Jacques Poitrenaud. Music by Hughes de Courson. Cast: Jacques Spiesser, Andre Rouyer, Max Vialle, Francis Huster, Michel Robin. Eastmancolor.

Length 80 min. France. 1976.

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S M E N /M O THER KUSTER'S TRIP TO HEAVEN

Honour of Katharina Blum — has instead

Jack Warden and Robert Redford in Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men

The Luster family prior to the radio broadcast of Mr Luster’s ‘defiant’ death, Jlainer Werner Fassbinder’s Mother Luster’s Trip To Heaven

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN a n d MOTHER KUSTER’S TRIP TO HEAVEN Tom Ryan Volker Schlondorff and Margarethe von T rotta’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

(1975, West Germany), Alan J. Pakula’s All President’s Men (1976, U.S.) and R ainer W erner F assb in d er’s M other Luster’s Trip to Heaven (1975, West Ger­ many) have all coincidentally appeared in Australia at the same time. The nature of the coincidence is that all three take as their ostensible subject the function of the press in contemporary Western society. But that is as far as the coincidence goes, for the films reveal marked differences, both in terms of their form and the perspective they offer on their subject.

The least interesting of the three is the first mentioned, stunning to look at as it describes the annihilation of Katharina’s identity by an irresponsible press. But though the film is thoroughly engrossing, it is quite without the sense of distance which could have m ad e its p o litic a l/p ro pagandistic design much more telling.

The limitations become clearer when the film is placed next to the Pakula and the Fassbinder.

The

Pakula’s film, equally powerful, follows the fascinating political-cum-criminal in­ vestigations of the now fam ous Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But it is as much concerned with their professional obsession as it is with the corruption they are able to expose (a point which links the film structually with two of Pakula’s earlier films about investigation, Klute and The Parallax View). The two journalists are seen to be detached from the human implications of their investigation, and, indeed, seem in­ capable of relating to each other, or to anyone, on other than a professional level.

Their “ love affairs” are conducted with their typewriters and their meetings are solely constituted by discussions of the progress of their stories. The film’s next-to-last sequence catches the point nicely — in left of frame a television screen presents film of Nixon’s in­ auguration ceremony, and, whatever we might think of the man from our safe positions of moral superiority, it is a moving scene; to the right of the image, in the whiteness of the Washington Post offices, W oodward and Bernstein are shown feverishly belting away at their typewriters, their exposures soon to bring the President, literally, to his knees.

In no way am I suggesting that the jour­ nalists should have spared their targets,' or been more tactful with their inquiries. The consequences of this would be frightening to consider. What is important here is that Pakula, who could have easily made this a ‘goodies versus baddies’ enterprise — a description which almost applies to The Lost

been able to create, or d ram atically re-create, for he has explored the implica­ tions which Woodward and Bernstein touch upon in their book, a moral dilemma. There is just no alternative means by which the two men could have infiltrated the web of secrecy and fear which faced them, and what we are left with is the irreconcilable choice between the human suffering that resulted from their inquiry and the need to know the truth.

The film, significantly, ends as it had begun, with the gunfire of a typewriter’s keys, this time spelling out in staccato the sentences meted out at the Watergate trials.

Mother Luster’s Trip to Heaven is, perhaps, the most interesting of the three films, setting press and political exploita­ tion against public complicity in it, and plac­ ing an ‘innocent’ between the two, but presenting that structure in a form that allows us the outlines of a plot yet constantly denies the conventions normally associated with a formal narrative structure. Mrs Luster’s husband, a factory worker, has kill­ ed his boss and then himself, and both the press and her daughter seek to make much out of the situation. The former manipulate the ‘human interest’ angle, inveigling their way into Mrs Luster’s trust by offering her sympathy and assistance in her grief, while the latter endeavors to further her career as a singer by exploiting her father’s name, using the journalist/photographer who has been manipulating her mother as a potential stepping-stone. Then the ‘game’ is taken a step further as Mrs Luster is befriended by a Communist Party official and his wife (she being the only one to express doubts about using Mrs Luster in such a fashion), who proceed to ascribe political martyrdom to Mr Luster.

The cycle approaches completion when, disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of the communists, the widow turns to an anarchist group as her last chance to save her husband’s name. The group invade the appropriate newspaper office and, their demands for a front-page retraction refused, produce their weapons, asking as their ran­ som the release of all political prisoners in Germany and a plane to fly them out of Frankfurt.

The film closes with a series of titles over Mrs Luster’s astonished face, these titles reporting the group’s failure and her death in the subsequent violence.

Our sympathies throughout are firmly with Mrs Luster, the ‘innocent’, though Fassbinder dictates that our involvement with this film (as with his others) be quite different from that we share with ‘real life’ dramas, exemplified by the other two films I have mentioned. The difference is best made clear via the simple analogy which dis­ tinguishes Brechtian theatre from that of the traditional dramatists. And, obviously, there is much that Fassbinder owes to Brecht and his disciples, primarily in his style which sets in tension a “ bourgeois aesthetic” , the depic­ tion of a structured ‘real’ world, and an “ anti-bourgeois” one, constantly calling attention to its artifice, denying an audience the opportunity to be moved by identifiable characters and insisting instead upon a politicized response. Such a tension both leads us towards ‘the story’ and directs us away from it, hopefully towards the real world in which the story found its source.

One of the major problems involved in the attempt to pursue a Brechtian line in the 1970s is that a bourgeois culture (one essen­ tially concerned with art) is now generally comfortable in its embrace of those works bent on structuring a refutation of its aesthetic forms, the embrace being couched largely in terms of the location of a “creative intelligence” in the dissenting work. Even a film as self-consciously ugly as Wind From the East (in which tension is nil and denial and insistence are all) has been able to win admirers in the very circles against which its aesthetic profanities are directed.

Cinema Papers, September— 171

oz

Al l. rilH PRESIDENT’S MEN/M OTHER KUSTER'S TRIP TO HEAVEN

Fassbinder is a long way from Godard’s extremism. In Mother Kuster’s Trip to Heaven, through his use of mise-en-scene, he defines our reaction to the world of the characters he creates: the opening sequence precisely places Mrs Kuster in her domestic environment, which looks and sounds just like a television commercial, with its observation of ritual, and its trivial family conversation performed against the muzak sounds coming from the kitchen radio. The interruption to the program, a news flash of the factory incident, merely merges into the anonymity of the scene,-until word comes that the flash had been referring to Mr Kuster.

The contrast between this use of mise-enscene and Pakula’s is a question of the degree of stylization — while that of All the P re s id e n t’s M en is subm erged in a ’naturalistic’ (i.e. conventional) narrative flow, Fassbinder’s consciously calls atten­ tion to itself. Such a method as Fassbinder’s is one of the ways in which we are directed away from the work and into the world in which its issues are relevant, though we do not always follow directions.

The visual information offered is stripped to its essentials, denying us a ‘naturalistic’ reading on the one hand, but nevertheless tempting us to respond to the characters as ‘real’ people on the other. For while the stylized imagery and the absurdist elements of plot do call attention to the fact that we are watching a film, the flesh-and-blood dis­ tress that Mrs Kuster suffers, and the ex­ ploitation that surrounds her, is the stuff from which melodrama is made, and con­ flicts with this mode of distanciation.

The melodramatic impulse is clear when Mrs Kuster defiantly proclaims to her daughter: “ Your father’s dead, but I’m still alive. And 1 swear to you, one day there’s going to be a reckoning.” We are at the same time touched by her passionate com­ mitment and able to recognize the limita­ tions of her awareness about her husband (his motivation for the killing remains unex­ plained and is, finally, irrelevant), about the power structures imposing on her, and about herself. There are forces at work, against which she has no useful weapon, and, for all the moral strength of her assertion of her dignity as a human being, she is irrevocably isolated.

Yet our reaction to her in such terms as those I "have used has to be constantly qualified because of the form of the drama, much closer to comedy than tragedy, tempting us to be moved by Mrs Kuster’s plight, but denying us the the satisfaction of such an emotional response by underlining the artifice .that co nstitutes the art.

Fassbinder’s politics are not so much to be found in his depiction of the moral decadence of West German society — though he is clearly concerned with that — as they are in his denial of the “ bourgeois aesthetic” .

OZ Beryl Donaldson and John Langer The idea of basing a film on a classic like the Wizard of Oz is obviously a difficult enterprise. The original is so charged with emotional meaning and so much a part of the unconscious of generations of filmgoers that put-down comparisons could easily become a substitute for genuine evaluation.

It would be unfortunate if that were to happen to Oz, for it seems self-evident that a young director’s first feature is not going to measure up to one of the best-loved Hollywood fantasies of all time.

Chris Lofven’s Oz is obviously not as good as the old film on which it is based; nor does it have the weight and class of recent Australian films like Devil’s Playground or Caddie. However, such statements hardly constitute fair criticism, which should surely take place in the context of what Oz is — a low budget rock and roll film.

Considered in this way, Oz stands up quite well. As Easy Rider demonstrated, the right combination of rock music and well-filmed landscapes can save even the most banal of scripts, by touching on that liberating sense of exhilaration that comes from speeding along country roads to a rock beat. The road sequences in Oz are good, with Dan Burstall’s naturalistic camera work and Ross Wilson’s music providing that mixture of elements needed to involve the viewer in this rock odyssey.

The fact that the film doesn’t take itself too seriously provides for a journey which is mercifully comic, rather than cosmic, with Bruce Spence’s engaging portrayal of the spaced-out surfie (Blondie/Scarecrow) gently satirizing the Zen cliches of the counter-culture. The Tin Man without a heart is translated into the ocker mechanic, Greaseball, played by Michael Carmen, whose response to other people’s troubles is

“ bugger ’em” .

His initial interest in Dorothy is solely in terms of his ‘dipstick’, but like his counter­ part in the Wizard of Oz, he ends the journey with a heart, implicated in bonds of friendship with the other three—in spite of his best efforts to the contrary. Killer, the mis-named bikie brilliantly acted by Gary Waddell, relates most successfully to the original characterization. Desperately striv­ ing for toughness, cringing and whimpering when his bluff is called, he makes a fine cowardly lion. Devotees of the Wizard of Oz will realize that this successful performance is in part assisted by direct borrowing of lines from the original script. Killer’s initial confrontation with Dorothy in the service station toilet is pure Ed Wynn.

As in the original, it is Dorothy’s journey to the city to see the Wizard — translated here as a rock superstar — that provides the vehicle for action. Her quest is made credi­ ble through Joy Dunstan’s nicely balanced display of naivette and resourcefulness. It is for the characterization of Dorothy, and the poignant contrast between her starstruck yearnings (however puerile) and the social wasteland of the Australian country town environment, that Oz warrants our attention as more than just a rock and roll film.

The rock fantasy might seem an unlikely place to find serious comment on the situa­ tion of women, but Lofven uses it effectively in the exploration of an important but neglected aspect of the Australian ethos — the experience of adolescent girls living out their romantic dreams in a circumscribed world peopled by monosyllabic males for whom they are all but irrelevant, except sex­ ually, and an older generation turned into zombies by their life-denying social world.

Dorothy in the original seeks the Wizard in order to return once again to security and normalcy, to that place that is like no other — home — whereas in this case her search provides an escape from the barren and stultifying forces of her environment.

It is interesting to note that in relation to a number of recent commercial Australian

FAMILY PLOT Ken Mogg “With Hitchcock almost everybody suf­ fers total recall.”

Roger Greenspun

Alan J. Pakula. Distributed by Roadshow.

P rod u ced by W a lter C o b le n z . A s s o c ia te Producers, Michael Britton, Jon Boorstin. Produc­ tion Company, Wildwood Enterprises/Warner Bros. A Robert Redford - Alan J. Pakula film.

Screenplay by William Goldman. Based on the book by Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward. Director of Photography, Gordon Willis. Edited by Robert L. Wolfe. Music by David Shire. Set Decoration

by George Gaines. Sound by Jim Webb, Les Fresholtz. Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Hal Holbrook, Jason Robards. Technicolor. Length 138 min. U.S. 1976. “

MUTTER KÜSTERS FAHRT ZUM HIMMEL (Mother Kuster’s Trip To Heaven). Directed by

172—Cinema Papers, September

the present. Perhaps it is no accident that these films locate themselves in the past.

They tend to take up the kinds of themes ex­ plored in Australian literature and poetry by historians, and appear to fit into the fram ew ork o f d iscussion a b o u t the “ Australian experience” that has been carried out by the literary intelligentsia. By looking at the past it is possible to perpetuate the kinds of stereotypes and myths that go to make up the “Australian Legend” : the Aussie battler, mateshfp, the tension between European gentility and emerging Australian values, and the harsh unrelenting landscape.

By virtue of its derivation from one of the most renown products of the Hollywood dream factory, and its use of rock culture, Oz acknow ledges that contem porary Australia is indeed part of an urbanized mass society and that the myths and cultural symbols connected with that type of society have applicability and resonance even in the isolated country towns of the Australian bush. The Wizard of Oz fantasy placed in the Australian context may be Lofven’s attempt at updating certain models of cultural analysis to include the dynamics of the here and now.

The film, of course, is not without its limitations — sequences that try to be humourous but fail; the obligatory homosex­ ual, stereotyped to the point where Lofven’s motives become doubtful; the sound in the opening scenes; the unsubtle representation of commercial interests; a menacing truck and pair of mirror sunglasses reminiscent of Duel and Cool Hand Luke respectively.

However, given that Oz has been made with a certain segment of the youth market in mind, Lofven has deliberately not aimed too high — a point definitely in his favour.

He has succeeded in pulling together a number of easily identifiable sub-cultures in order to create a fantasy with Australian relevance, and even if the moral note at the end seems slightly time worn, at least it was entertaining getting there.

OZ. Directed by Chris Lofven. Distributed by BEF. Produced by Chris Lofven, Lyne Helms.

Associate Producer, Jane Scott. Production Com­ pany, Count Features Inc. Screenplay by Chris Lofven. Director of Photography, Dan Burstall.

Edited by Les Luxford. Music by Ross Wilson.

Art Direction by Robbie Perkins. Sound by Danny Dyson. Cast: Joy Dunstan, Graham Matters, Bruce Spence, Michael Carmen, Gary Waddell.

Eastmancolor. Length 90 min. Australia. 1976.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN. Directed by

Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Produced by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Production Company, Tango Films. Screenplay by Kurt Raab, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Director o f Photography, Michael Ballhaus. Edited by Thea Eymesz. Music by Peer Raben. Cast: Brigitte Mira, Karl-Heinz Bohn, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Irm Hermann, Armin Meier, Gottfried John. Colour. Length 120 mins. Germany. 1975.

films — Picnic at Hanging Rock, Caddie, Sunday Too Far Away, Between Wars, The Devil’s Playground — Oz stands firmly in

Bruce Spence as the surfie in Chris Lofven’s ‘remake’ of the Wizard o f Oz, Oz.

Edith Head was asked by Hitchcock to design “ four levels” of costume for Family Plot. Kidnappers Arthur Adamson and Fran (William Devane and Karen Black) are con­ ceived as figures of fashion; kooky spiritualist Blanche and her actor-cabdriver boyfriend George (Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern) as workaday; wealthy Julie Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt) as fastidious; and a figure like Blanche’s client Ida Cookson as dowdy. A pparently, too, Hitchcock had intended Fran to wear her blonde wig disguise for the kidnapping of Bishop Wood from St. Anselm’s Cathedral, but Ms Head persuaded Hitchcock that the tonality was wrong; Fran now appears in that scene as a deceptively sick old lady.

Ernest Lehman’s script offers a jaunty contrast to his earlier Hitchcock film, the

FAMILY PLOT

high-powered North By Northwest (1959).

The difference roughly is that between advertising man Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), taking all those taxis around New York and Mount Rushmore, and Bruce Dern’s pipe-chewing California cabby, engaging his amateur sleuthing on foot most of the time. Then again, Family Plot is what Roger Greenspun in Film Comment called a “ couples” film; by my count, Blanche and George are one of five couples it contains.

A further comparison with Frenzy (1972)' might seem in order, except that the new film has equal claim to be called a “ singles” film. It contains both several spinsters or widows (as in North By Northwest) and several “ loners” whose marital status isn’t defined, but who display greater or lesser amounts of cheery professional fortitude.

This counter-shading has importance if only because Blanche seems determined to trade in her “ singles” status.

None of the couples are verified as being married. “ A sign of the times” , Hitchcock calls it. They represent varying degrees of enterprise or stagnation. Brooding Joe M aloney once helped boyhood chum Adamson incinerate the latter’s foster­ parents, and now lives with his cowering wife in a neglected country garage. Up on Mount Sherman another couple run a humble cafe called “ Abe and Mabel’s” and turn a blipd eye to the dubious liaisons of some of their customers, notably that of a priest and a pretty brunette in a red dress. As for Adamson and Fran, fortune has favoured them so far. Adamson’s skullduggery and good looks have ac q u ire d him th e proprietorship of a classy jewellery store and a young mistress whom he keeps in a comfortable town house. His boast to Fran that “ we move as one” almost rings true; possibly only the fact that he hasn’t told her about his boyhood leaves us uneasy.

Hitchcock soon points this up. On the pair’s arriving home after the first ransom collection, a close-up of Fran stowing her wig in the refrigerator freezer is followed by a second close-up of Adamson’s hands tak­ ing a roll of cellulose tape from a drawer.

Momentarily, the two of them occupy dis­ tinct spaces, lent only a superficial unity by the similar composition of the shots.2 Predic­ tably, fortune is really on Blanche and George’s side; they are the most likeable couple Hitchcock has filmed since Jennifer and Sam (Shirley MacLaine and John For­ sythe) in The Trouble With Harry (1955).

They are not as smart, perhaps, and appear as bumbling opportunists most of the time, but one suspects that in this post­ Watergate age Hitchcock intends that we appreciate their essential humanity. Theirs is a legitimate fakery3 based on “ a healthy respect for love and m oney” . R oger Greenspun adds that the two major couples are “ mirror opposites in some ways” .

Hence, it’s fitting that the triumph of one couple should echo a moment of nemesis for the other. Specifically, one recalls Fran moving in a slow arc to try and conceal from Blanche the drugged bishop in Adamson’s car, but only causing his eminence to tumble into view.4 Much later, it’s Blanche who moves trance-like past George towards Adamson’s hallway chandelier and there finds the hidden ransom diamond.

She then turns to the film audience and winks.

Even before entering the theatre we see posters showing Hitchcock winking, and in the trailer he tells us that as “ something of a spiritualist” himself he can assure us that Madame Blanche is “ very definitely a fake” .

But Family Plot exceeds being just an enter­ taining admission of charlatanry a la Orson Welles; its spectrum of characters, who are clearly surrogates for both director and audience, puts it in the category of Pirandello’s plays.

It begins with a title and brief credits (Hitchcock’s and Lehman’s) rapidly replac­ ed by a close-up of Blanche, all this seen in a

crystal ball; then the ball dissolves as if leav­ ing Blanche to manage alone.5 At one level the scene which follows is a piece of Exorcist-like hokum. Seventy-eight year old Julia Rainbird has summoned the much younger Blanche to her home, hoping by means of spiritualism to allay a troubled conscience and trace the illegitimate son (Adamson) of her late sister whom she banished long ago. Not until two or three minutes of the seance have elapsed does Hitchcock show Blanche peeping through her fingers at her client’s reactions, thereby letting us off the hook. Visually we are told that Blanche is indeed a fake. But aurally?

On the soundtrack John Williams’ volup­ tuous choir seems thoroughly to endorse the whole business. It’s a moment not unlike that in Vertigo (1958) when Scottie (James Stewart) reproaches Judy (Kim Novak) for being “ sentimental” , and the late Bernard Herrmann’s richest score agonized more sweetly than ever. In both cases, Hitchcock’s Pirandellian cinema mocks our simplicities, our attenuating either/or notions.

Roger Greenspun says, “ Hitchcock con­ structs a cinema of philosophic principles” , but naturally no literal reading of any scene is valid. Family Plot is about life, about the audience, about Hitchcock — and about the latter’s relation to the other two. It makes some sense to note that Rainbird’s age is about the same as Hitchcock’s and that she lives in a Tudor-fronted house which resembles a larger version of the Hitchcock home in Bel Air. Then, too, the opening scene establishes affinities between Rainbird and Blanche, the older perhaps a mellowed version of the younger. Each resembles the other in her dress and each appeals to us the more for having something to hide. Only Blanche’s callowness soon becomes apparent ju st as T h o rn h ill’s did in N orth By Northwest.

Further clues can be found in that film.

After all, Family Plot was originally called Deceit, and included in the ignominies en­ dured by Roger Thornhill was his chastening for deceiving others as well as himself.

Ironically, he was told by an exasperated lady at the art auction: “ One thing we know, you’re no fake! You’re a genuine idiot!”

In F am ily P lo t ev ery o n e has his duplicities, and climactically there’s the funny/pathetic moment in the cemetery when widowed Mrs Maloney shouts “ Fake” and kicks the gravestone of the fictitious “ Eddie Shoebridge” .

Broadly speaking, the sardonic truth a d u m b r a te d h e re a b o u t p e o p l e ’s relationships is an egocentric and an “ oc­

cidental” one;6 it bears some relation to Hitchcock’s requirement of his actors to “ fake it” rather than “ feel it” . If that is a criticism, it needs modifying, both because of the remarkable fact that Hitchcock’s films often end up, however ambiguously, on a note of oriental acceptance (The Birds, for one)7, and because they can, like Pirandello’s plays, give us a felt sense of reaching the limits of what constitutes personality. Of course, there is still quite a difference between Hitchcock’s people-oriented con­ cept of fakery, and, say, the universeoriented doctrine of maya or illusion — an Easterner wouldn't need to restore his belief in the concrete world by kicking at a hunk of rock, as Dr Samuel Johnson did on a famous occasion.

A sense of incipient depletion or destruc­ tion is necessary to underpin Hitchcockian suspense. The central prairie scene of North

By Northwest stood as a bold image of T h o r n h il l’s lo ss o f E ro s, o f w h at Freud called the “ oceanic feeling” (so beautifully distilled as the very atmosphere of Vertigo). One of Blanche’s nether voices assures Ms Rainbird that the “ desert” of her lost love will bloom again . . . Repeatedly Hitchcock’s films have centred on or revolv­ ed around “ nothing” — and repeatedly his critics have been known to miss the point.

A local reviewer of Family Plot found it “ predictably a marvellous piece of enter­ tainm ent” , but its director “ about as profound as a plate of soup” . One sym­ pathizes only slightly. I t’s true th a t Hitchcock refuses to endorse most prevail­ ing “ participation mystiques” and for that reason his lesser films — the ones whose “ philosophic principles” get clouded by poor scripts or inadequate performances — do oc­ cupy something of an emotional limbo.8 Family Plot, though, is very definitely ma­ jor Hitchcock. The official advertising blurb that says “ there’s no body in the family plot” (and one can almost hear the elderly Hitchcock adding “ yet” under his breath) in no way constitutes an admission of lack of substance. The film’s content is the sprightly way in which the nothingness is first stated and then skirted, the exhilarating perfor­ mance by Barbara Harris, the vitality of the principles embedded in the form. Blanche herself personifies the very nature of libidinous suspense.

So we come back to the wink that ends Family Plot, signal of Blanche’s victorious marital instinct and the complement of her earlier surreptitious glances. Tonally it belongs somewhere between the vertiginous shots of eyes in Vertigo and Psycho and the

“sentimental” , that is to say, sexy last shot of the North By Northwest train going into a tunnel. In addition it beautifully returns the whole m atter to the audience. Very Pirandellian. H itchcock at his m ost detached.

The entire final scene in which Blanche tricks her captors and makes good her and George’s escape says all that could be said.

If Adamson’s wilfulness has put him beyond r e d e m p tio n , B la n c h e ’s lif e s ty le o f “ legitimate fakery” saves her when most needed. Hamming like crazy and yelling for George (an actor too), she runs. At that mo­ ment the two of them really “ move as one” .

Then, with Adamson and Fran locked in the secret room of their own making, Blanche moves off alone in quest of diamonds. Just how she finds them is not explicable, any more than Hitchcock has ever been able to explain his talent to interviewers. A wink is an intangible thing.

With the possible exception of its serio­ comic out-of-control car ride sequence on Mount Sherman, Family Plot is impeccably paced. Possibly, too, the lead actors may be under-directed, although the mystery sur­ rounding Fran to the very end is surely inten­ tional. It tells us something about Adam­ son’s domination of her, a point reinforced by the part of Mrs Clay (Edith Atwater) who, as Adamson’s assistant in his jewellery store, graciously suffers his manipulative charm. Resisting speculation on how far he, too, may be a Hitchcock surrogate, one con­ cludes instead with Edith Head’s summative description of Hitchcock as a Rock of Gibraltar —• not a comment on his lack of humour. Hitchcock’s appearance in Family Plot is as a shadowy profile on the glass door of the Registrar of Births and Deaths, wagg­ ing an authoritative finger at a questioner.

FOOTNOTES 1. The innumerable couples of both genders in Frenzy constituted a whole spectrum of dis­ affection, not to say sado-masochism. Even a doctor during a memorable pub scene seemed intent on one-upping his lawyer acquaintance in a discussion of the “ necktie murderer”.

2. A similar prolepsis in Psycho (1960) comprized a close-up of Norman Bates’ (Anthony Perkins) hand hovering undecidedly above a board of room keys and Marion Crane’s (Janet Leigh) distracted murmur of “ Los Angeles” as she signed a false name and address in the motel register.

3. Even the kidnapped bishop sees fit to try and trick his captors into leaving their fingerprints.

4. One recalls the police chiefs grudging compli­ ment to Fran after the first ransom collection, “ Not one goddam mistake!” But Fran becomes increasingly unsettled by her partner’s ruthless solipsism, rather like Mrs Drayton (Brenda de Banzie) in the re-make of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) who finally abets the kid­ napped boy’s escape.

5. As far back as Spellbound (1945) Hitchcock prefaced his film with Shakespeare’s “the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves”. The link with Pirandello (Six Characters In Search O f An Author, Right You Are — I f You Think Y o u . Are) resides in Hitchcock’s insistent, though devious, humanism.

6. Like the “transactional analyses” of behaviour in Frenzy, perhaps.

7. Peter Bogdanovich records that Hitchcock compromized on his original idea for the titles sequence of The Birds (1962), which was to have included delicate bird designs from antique Chinaware.

8. The late James Agee wrote of The Paradine Case (1947) that in it “ Hitchcock uses a lot of skill over a lot of nothing” .

FAMILY PLOT. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Distributed by C .I.C . N o producer credit.

Screenplay by Ernest Lehman. Based on the novel The Rainbird Pattern by Victor Canning. Director of Photography, Leonard J. South. Edited by J. Terry Williams. Music by John Williams. Set Direction by James W. Payne. Sound by James Alexander, Robert L. Hoyt. Cast: Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane, Ed Lauter, Cathleen Nesbitt, Katherine Helmond, Edith Atwater, William Prince. Technicolor.

Length 120 min. U .S. 1976.

Cinema Papers, September— 173

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THE OXFORD COMPANION TO FILM Edited by Liz-Anne Bawden Oxford University Press.

Scott Murray.

The latest entry in the field of film en­ cyclopedias and companions is The Oxford Companion to Film. Edited by Liz-Anne Bawden, it has a simple but handsome appearance and a remarkably well printed text. The few black and white stills are generally acceptable, though the colour plates less so.

Evaluating companions is a fairly per­ sonal matter, and overall I like the book. It certainly makes a pleasant change to the Filmgoers Companion of Leslie Halliwell, and the brief but excellent Dictionary o f the Cinema by Peter Graham. What is unique about the Oxford Companion is that entries for directors, actors, etc, are descriptive, and incorporate titles in the text. These entries are both summational and analytical, and generally endeavour to pinpoint a person’s achievements or style. The entry for Bresson includes, for example, the following passage: “ Bresson’s catholic beliefs are vital to the the­ matic coherence of his work: a state of grace or holiness is achieved through sin and suffering.

His people are defined existentially through their actions, using the minimum of verbal exposition and avoiding psychological explanations. His narrative is pared down to focus on the implicit moral . . . An artist of refined vision . .

The degree to which such criticism can or should dissect a person’s work within such a format is arguable, but personally I find such descriptions (even if I totally disagree with them) far preferable to, “ French writerdirector of austere, introspective, almost mystical films” . (Halliwell).

The drawback of this prose approach, however, is that it makes a quick checking of film titles difficult as the italicization does not stand out well in the text. What is helpful though is the use of capitals for titles that are entered separately in the book. Those films of Bresson awarded such treatment are Journal d’un Cure de Campagne (not Le Journal as it should be), Un Condamn a mort s’est Echappe, Le Proces de Jeanne D ’Arc, Mouchette. No such luck in Halliwell, which

has a very heavy bias towards American cinema which one may or may not like. (I don’t particularly).

So much for the virtues. Unfortunately there are several and consistent failings in the book. The major one is that not all of a director’s films are listed (nor any indication given whether or not the given list is com­ plete). For example, no mention is made of Losey’s The Damned, and incorrectly claims that “The Criminal . . . was followed by Eva” . It also refers to “three films he made under various pseudonyms” , but does not attempt to list them. Such ommissions cap be very annoying.

A lesser criticism, but one I still consider important, is~the standard of proofing. Ox­ ford University Press has always enjoyed — quite rightly — the reputation of the

publishing house as far as standards of English and grammar go. It is therefore very disappointing to see such phrases as “ main protagonist” creeping into the text. This said, however, it must be pointed out that it is still the best of the companions in terms of style and sub-editing.

Overall, I like The Oxford Companion greatly.and suggest that it is, despite a rather high price-tag, a most valuable asset.

‘WANDERING FOREVER BETWEEN THE WINDS’

The John Ford Movie Mystery

by Andrew Sarris; Seeker and Warburg, 1976

John Ford

by Joseph McBride and Michael Wilmington; Seeker and Warburg, 1974 Tom Ryan “ What is needed . . . urgently at this mo­ ment is a bridge between the small band of surviving Ford enthusiasts on the far side of the river and the vast army of non-believers on the near side” . Thus, Andrew Sarris im­ plies, is the goal of his long-promised book on John Ford', a goal which suggests more about the state of Sarris’ approach to his profession than it does about the prevailing discussion of Ford’s .films.

Why is it necessary to construct some “ bridge” between “ enthusiasts” and “ non­ believers”? Surely it is preferable that dis­ cussions of Ford films, rather than of Ford, provide exchanges of insights into these Tilms and into the various ways of approach­ ing them. The urge to draw together various critical viewpoints not only splits infinitives, but also suggests a paternalism quite in­ appropriate to critical debate.

It is distressing that the author of the p a th -fin d in g The A m e ric a n C inem a (E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., New York, 1968) seems to have progressed little beyond an admission that he still hasn’t seen all those films he had so authoritatively listed the best part of a decade ago. An impressive, polemical starting point appears to have become the end of the sentence. The John Ford Movie Mystery is fashioned without any sense of the current climate of critical debate about the cinema, let alone about ■films bearing the name of John Ford.

Either by way of indirect response to the collective text published in 1970 by the editors of Cahiers du Cinema (not to be con­ fused, even in translation, with Cinema Papers) on Young M r Lincoln, or by simple ignorance of it, he asserts that “ the point to be made with Ford is that he is too complex an artist to be treated with the crude tools of political dialectics” (p. 15). Yet the carefully phrased intro d u ctio n to the a u th o rs’ theoretical position in that text defines a critical/ideological stance that can hardly be

described as “ crude” : “ . . . an artistic product cannot be linked to its socio­ historical context according to a linear, ex­ pressive, direct casuality (unless one falls into a reductionist historical determinism), but . . . it has a complex, mediated and decentred relationship with this context, which has to be rigorously specified (which is why it is simplistic to discard ‘classic’ Hollywood cinema on the pretext that since it is part of the capitalist system, it can only reflect it).” (English translation from Screen, Autumn, 1972, p. 7.) Significantly, this article is absent from the “ Select Bibliography” which closes Sarris’ book.

Ironically, Sarris seems to have found his way towards the need to see Ford’s films in some sort of a broader context, but though he recognizes this need, at least in part (“The Ford-Nichols relationship, especially in the thirties, is . . . a crucial aspect of any assess­ ment of Ford’s developing reputation . . throw-away comments about studio heads and stars), he reveals himself as incapable of usefully ‘placing’ the films in such a context as he is of offering a satisfying aesthetic analysis of any single film. Instead of providing even a problematic perspective on the films as products of complex social, in­ dustrial and ideological interactions, Sarris underlines the impotence of his enterprise by constantly talking around the point, with asides of irrelevant paraphernalia, and never trying to come to grips with the issues. And, finally, 1 cannot escape the feeling that any reservations Sarris might have about the Ford oeuvre have come from an uncomfort­ able viewing of the recently discovered collection of his silent and early sound films (his rightful discomfort finding an outlet in The Village Voice in September last year) than from any increased awareness of the unresolved tensions that make films like The Searchers and The Quiet Man so exciting and so frustrating.

The value of Andrew Sarris’ prose lies in its suggestive quality rather than in any coherent exploration of what is suggested. It is left to others to do the real job of criticism, which, in spite of Sarris’ resentment of “the frame by frame heretics and the stilted struc­ turalists” , does require that the critic depend less on assertion and more on analysis. The usefulness of this suggestiveness, however, ought not to be forgotten in the framework of the view I have expressed here about The John Ford- Movie Mystery.

His summation of the perspective on the actions in Ford’s films is an evocative one and does indicate that, whatever broader context one ought to endeavour to locate, the presence of the auteur is a strong one: “ What makes Ford’s characters unique in the Western Epic is their double image, alternating between close-ups of emotional intimacy and long-shots of epic involve­ ment, thus capturing both the twitches 6f life and the silhouettes of legend.” (p. 85) Unfortunately, it is not a point that he develops in relation to particular films, whereas Joseph McBride and Michael Wilmington in their John Ford, quoting Sarris as their stimulus (p. 24), probe this “double image” thesis most fruitfully in

relation to a number of films. They take it beyond the Western and extend it to a dis­ cussion of the tension, established in many of the films, between the community and the individual, a balancing process remaining unresolved between the celebration of com­ munal ritual, and the tragic dimension of those who cannot participate.

McBride and Wilmington’s book is con­ siderably more satisfying than Sarris’, but it attempts considerably less. It has little in­ terest in the critical-cum-ideological debate and, rather than trying to trace the Ford thread through the American cinema from beginning to end, the two critics are selective in the films they tackle. Especially good are the analyses of Wagon Master, My Darling Clementine, The Sun Shines Bright, The Searchers and Seven Women (some are revisions of articles written for various film journals). It is not a question of whether one agrees with their readings of the films, but rather the method and tone of the writing. In it can be found a healthy willingness to argue about the films in detail and a modest con­ cern that justice should be done to the sub­ ject. It is no coincidence that the book is dedicated to Robin Wood, still, arguably, the most powerful critic writing in the English language2.

However, it is a pity that McBride chose to reprint his maudlin article, “ Bringing In The Sheaves” , originally published in Sight and Sound (Winter, 1973/74), recording his observations on Ford’s funeral. It catches the immediate sense of loss that we all feel when someone whose work we cherish dies, but it is out of place in the context of critical analysis. .

It also ought to be noted that the authors’ choice of films, which they admire to varying degrees, does deny the reader any balanced perspective on Ford’s achievement. Why, for instance, does McBride omit his largely dis­ illusioned article from Sight and Sound, (Autumn, 1972, pp. 213-216) on the hawkish film Ford produced about the American in­ volvement in Vietnam? And why does Wilmington not offer his valuable piece (from The Velvet Light Trap, No. 5, pp. 33­ 35) on The Fugitive? On the other hand, McBride does include an account of his painfully frustrating attempt to interview Ford in August, 1970, which, in revealing lit­ tle about Ford’s films, reveals much about the ageing director.

Hopefully during the next decade, further research into “the cinema of John Ford” will provide not only critical analysis of the c a lib r e p ro d u c e d by M c B rid e and Wilmington, but also the fruits of responsi­ ble scholarship into the context in which the director was working and thus into the far from clear ideological stance that it is possi­ ble to locate through the films.

'Perhaps that should read ‘John Ford’! For an in­ teresting commentary, see Geoffrey NowellS m ith ’s “ Six A uth ors in Pursuit o f The Searchers”, Screen, Spring, 1976, pp. 26-33. ;1 hope we don’t have to wait too long for W ood’s lengthy appraisal of Ford in the forthcoming En­ cyclopaedia o f Film Directors, edited by Richard Roud.

Recent acquisitions now available for rental from the Australian Film Insti­ tute’s Vincent Library

Pure S Winner of a special Jury Prize in the 1976 Australian Film Awards, Bert Dellng’s Pure S is an exciting action movie concerning twenty-four -hours in the life of four people brought together in their pursuit of dope. Lied to, cheated and robbed, they get more desperate. Seen from the inside, this situation balances the tension of need with the hard edged humour of the chase.

Australia 1975 Colour 16 mm 84 mins Rental $45.00

Eadweard MuybridgeZoopraxographer Eadweard Muybridge did not invent moving pictures-no one d id -b u t he made the first photographic motion pictures, starting in 1878, fifteen years before Lumiere’s first films. Thom Andersen’s fascinating documentary gradually restores the original motion to Muybridge's still photographic images, at the same time allowing us a unique insight into Muybridge’s life and times.

USA 1975 Colour 16 mm 60 mins Rental: $35.00

Queensland No hoper Doug had always wanted to go to Queensland. The trip seems the only way out after he and his mate Aub blow all their money at the dogs.

With Doug’s defacto Marge, the three try to make the break to greener pastures.

Directed by John Ruane, Queensland topped the Short Fiction Category section of this year’s Australian Film Awards.

Australia 1976 Colour 16 mm 52 mins Rental: $25.00

Here’s to you Mr Robinson A documentary on the Australian film pioneer/tramways employee, Reg Robinson. Peter Tammer and Garry Patterson have produced a portrait of a man whose contribution to Australian film history has not yet been fully recognised.

Australia 1976 Colour 16 mm 50 mins Rental $25.00

The Longford Cinema

Henry Miller Asleep and Awake "Awakening with a flurry of sleepy grunts, Mr Miller leads the camera to his bathroom, where he fingers his features to see if they're still there, and then proceeds to give us a tour of the pictures and photographs on the walls." (Nora Sayre, The New York Times). Directed by Tom Schiller.

USA Colour 16 mm 35 mins Rental: $25.00 Illuminations A young couple live in an almost hallucinatory world. Through the death of the girl’s father a sense of the infinite develops between them. Their love gives them enough self-knowledge to become highly alert and sensitive, and each confrontation with life or death becomes a fresh and unique experience.

Australia 1976 Colour 16 mm 74 mins Rental: $35.00

i

Jazz on a Summer’s Day Bert Stern’s pioneering foray into musical documentary, is the first-and still the best-of the “ festival” films, as well as a definitive cinematic legacy of America’s musical heritage.

USA 1960 Colour 16 mm 85 mins Rental: $35.00 Mexico ’75 A film shot in Mexico City, at the Inter­ national Women’s Year Conference, and the Tribune. Written and directed

by Patricia Edgar, it is a basis for dis­ cussion of issues which have funda­ mental social significance within Australia.

Australia 1976 Colour 16 mm 50 mins Rental: $30.00

My Childhood and My Ain Folk My Childhood, directed by Bill Douglas, is the first part of an intended autobio­ graphical trilogy. Its subject is Jamie, a Scottish youth growing up in a mining village around the end of the Second World War. The film captures the fears and con­ fusion of the child as he is confronted by the hardships and fragile joys of living.

UK 1972 B & W 16 mm 48 mins Rental: $25.00 My Ain Folk follows the first part, My Childhood. Both films were pro­ duced by the British Film Institute Production Board.

UK 1973 B & W 16 mm 55 mins Rental: $25.00

The AFI’s newest cinema, the Long­ ford, which opened in Melbourne in August with the world premiere season of John Duigan’s The Tres­ passers, is Australia’s major outlet for Australian and international special­ ised cinema. The cinema has been called the Longford in honour of the pioneer Australian director Raymond Longford.

Forthcoming attractions include Walerian Borowczyk's Story of Sin, Tom Cowan’s Promised Woman, Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kasper Hauser and Louis Malle’s Phantom India.

For further information, Australian Film Institute 81 Cardigan Street Carlton Victoria 3053 Telephone (03) 3476888 Inquire about the new Associate Membership scheme.

AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION The project branch of the Australian Film Commission advises prospective applicants that completed applications (treatments, scripts, budget, backing papers, etc.) for consideration at the monthly commission meeting must be submitted to the project branch by the Monday nearest the first of the month.

This is necessary because of the time required to have each project fully assessed, both internally and externally within the Commission, to ensure it will have the best possible chance of being approved by the full commission meeting which is held on the last Mon­ day and Tuesday of each month.

Applicants are also reminded that with each application (regardless of whether it is for script development or production funding) a one-page story synopsis is required. To assist applicants with their submissions it is suggested that they use the following check list when forwarding their application form: .1. One page story synopsis.

2. Four copies of treatment or script.

3. Script development and/or pre­ production budget or detailed production budget (Metcalfe’s version) (which is applicable) 4. Copy of option (if applicable).

5. Career background of principals (producer, director, writer, etc.).

6. Letters from d is trib u to r or n e t w o r k , s u p p o r t i n g the application, if available.

7. Any further information in support of the application (i.e. other in­ vestors, etc.)

Following the principles that the Australian Film Development Corpora­ tion used when fixing the rate of in­ terest on loans at 7 per cent (subse­ quently the AFC interest was also fixed at 7 per cent) the Australian Film Com­ mission has reviewed the situation in light of the current economic climate, and has resolved the following: “That as from August 1, loans and/or bridging finance supplied by the AFC will be subject to 9.5 per cent interest per annum. This interest rate will be reviewed up or down at six monthly intervals.”

THE AUSTRALIAN WRITERS’ GUILD Our members are overjoyed at the optimistic sounds bubbling from the film industry and proud at the part writers have played in this renaissance.

But this joy is shadowed by a growing concern for the plight of Australian television production.

The policy of savaging the ABC climaxed recently when the Govern­ ment refused to grant the Commission sufficient funds to cover the flow-on from the May national wage case. This could result in a curtailment of produc­ tion, including vitally important drama production.

So concerned was the Guild that on July 3 the following telegram was sent to the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser: THIS UNION EXPRESSES GREAT DISTRESS AND ANGER AT GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS

WHICH FORCE THE ABC TO CURTAIL AUSTRALIAN DRAMA PRODUCTION. THIS WILL CAUSE PROFOUND HARDSHIP TO OUR MEMBERS ALREADY BATTLING IN A DEPRESSED INDUSTRY, IT WILL FURTHER WITHDRAW FROM THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE INDIGENOUS EXPRESSION OF THEIR CULTURE AND INCREASE FOREIGN DOMINATION OF A U S T R A L I A ’ S T EL EV I S I ON PROGRAMMING. WE STRONGLY URGE RECONSIDERATION OF YOUR MEASURES AND PRACTICAL SUPPORT OF ABC PLANS FOR EXPANDI NG AUSTRALIAN DRAMA. To ensure that our complaint was not totally ignored, we sent a copy to the Acting Leader of the Opposition with a plea for action: “This further attack on the ABC — and, inevitably, on the Australian television production industry — will increase the hardship already ex­ perienced by Australian writers, ac­ tors and technicians. Commercial n et wo rk s are s t e ad i ly, and del i berately, reduci ng their purchases of Australian drama.

Now the Government is forcing the ABC to do the same.

“We beg the Opposition’s support — in fact, its leadership — in the fight to build our television produc­ tion industry so that it will allow our members full expression of their talent and provide the Australian people with a proper reflection of their life, thought and culture.

“We would be glad to assist in any action the Opposition might take to rectify this most serious threat to a vital facet of Australian living.”

We don't know whether these tactics will have any effect, but we would be much more sanguine if we knew that similar telegrams and letters were be­ ing sent by everyone interested in the future of Australian television and film production. And isn’t that everyone who sincerely gives a damn about Australia and its culture?

Brian Wright, president, Australian Writers’ Guild.

MELBOURNE FILMMAKERS’ CO-OP. In spring this year, the Melbourne Filmmakers’ Co-op roadshow team (i.e. Kombi van, projector, and multi­ purpose filmmaker P.R. person) will be heading off on a six-week tour of country areas of Victoria.

The tour has been planned partly to take out films to isolated areas to meet a need which is not at present being catered for in some towns — i.e. as a cultural service; and secondly, to promote the films.

We have applied for a grant to cover the cost of this venture, but, if this fails, our enthusiasm and drive (four wheel?) will take us there anyway.

The replies we have received have been very positive: “We would be very interested in a roadshow of your films. We have thought of having a film day for the local community, with perhaps a few films for the children, as there is very little opportunity to see films here.”

“Our group would be most interested in such a venture and I am sure it would get a lot of support here.”

We would be taking a package of 10­ 15 films, enough to allow a wide selec­ tion for a two or three hour program; a speaker will be present to answer questions on all aspects of filmmaking in Australia.

Depending on the situation — i.e. where we screen and to what size audience — we may need to charge a minimal fee to cover costs — $1 or so, negotiable.

Anyone interested in having the roadshow stop in their town, backyard, loungeroom or whatever, please ring up the Co-op on 347 2984.

Workshops are also about to happen. A submission of about $8000 has been lodged with the Film and T.V. School for a basic pr oducti on workshop covering simple sound and lighting techniques.

If there is money available from the Film and T.V. School, then a workshop will be underway as soon as it is made available.

The F i l m m a k e r s ’ C o - o p is negotiating with the Video Co-op for shared space, studio space, ad­ ministration space, living space. A sub­ mission to the Melbourne City Council has been drafted and approaches are being made.

It is to be an active centre of media communication, a place which will be a resource, production and exhibition facility.

It is hoped that socially and culturally the centre will provide a home base for people wishing to learn all aspects of filmmaking, and the role that film and video can and does play in the com­ munity.

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE

In August of this year, Ms Karen Foley, who has been working in the Film Archive for three years, left Australia to attend the FJ.A.F. Summer School in East Berlin. The school is organized by the East Berlin Archive and will cover all aspects of film archive work. The students will live in for a month, attending lectures in the mor­ ning, practical sessions in the after­ noon and film screenings in the evening.

Ms Foley will also spend two weeks working with staff in the National Film Archive, London, and will visit the film archives in Copenhagen and Vienna.

The study trip is being supported by the National Library and the Film and Television School.

Some Australian films have been put on deposit for preservation. These in­ clude the feature Number 96 (1974) from Cash Harmon, the Sebastian series and Art series from Tim Burstall, The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten series and the Magic Boomerang

series from Roger Miram of Pacific Productions; the series shown on Australian television during the 1960s will be a valuable addition to our televi­ sion collection. Additional television material from the 1960s was received from Australian Programme Services,

including episodes from Casebook and Catwalk.

Among a collection of nitrate films, we have found a number of reels of the 1919 Australian film, Breaking of the Drought, directed by Franklyn Barrett.

This melodrama about the privations of settlers struggling with the elements, contrasted with the life of socialites in Sydney, is typical of Barrett’s pre­ occupation with Australia’s outback and his ability to depict the pioneering way of life with documentary realism.

Together with the two reels of the film already held, it seems as though we will be able to make a fairly complete copy.

We have 35 mm viewing prints for on-site study of the 1958 Smiley Gets a Gun, starring Keith Calvert, Chips Rafferty and Sybil Thorndike, and Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, 1971.

The Danish Film Archive has given 4000 stills of European and American films, duplicates from their collection.

We have also received stills and/or posters from many Australian films in­ cluding Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Caddie (1976), Stork (1971), The Love Epidemic (1975), Alvin Purple (1973), Alvin Rides Again (1974) and End Play (1975). Two original posters of Mutiny on the Bounty (1916) have been found among Raymond Longford’s papers.

The colours are still good and with some restoration work done to the paper, they will be a valuable addition to our collection.

LENDING COLLECTION

The documentaries of Frederick Wiseman, whose most recent film, Welfare, was shown at this year’s Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals, are now available for loan. In addition to Welfare there are seven other feature-length documentaries on American institutions: Essene, about a monastery; Basic Training, on army training; Law and Order, about a municipal police force; Primate, on scientific research; Hospital, Juvenile Court and High School.

A number of outstanding films by the South American director Raymundo Gleyzer are also available for loan. It Happened in Hualfin looks at three generations of Indians in a poor area of rural Argentina.

Mexico: The Frozen Revolution uses rare archival footage of the 1910-1917 revolution, together with contemporary sequences, to show the effect of the revolutionary movement on Mexican society. The Land Burns is a short and powerful representation of poverty and the effects of drought on rural com­ munities in Brazil. " Also available are a Mountain Romance, a Norwegian comedy made

by Leif Sinding in the 1920s; They Caught the Ferry, a short narrative film made by Carl Th. Dryer in 1948; Attica, Cinda Firestone’s investigation of the 1971 Attica prison rebellion; The Passengers, a French-Algerian co­ production about poor immigrant workers in France; and two Australian films which were finalists in this year's Greater Union competition at the Sydney Film Festival — the experimen­ ta l f i l m F i g u r e On e , by Tan Psomotragos and Trevor Graham, and Protected, a dramatized documentary depicting the hardships of Aboriginals on the Palm Island Reserve.

Cinema Papers, September— 177

SYDNEY FSLMMAKERS’

CO-OP The Sydney Filmmakers’ Co-op is rolling right along in spite of the usual turmoil over funding especially since the Australian Film Commission’s takeover of the Film, Radio and Televi­ sion Board.

A national catalogue supplement, with more than 150 new titles, is due to come out soon. This brings the number of films distributed by the Co-op to about 700. Some of the new films in the supplement include a selection of entrants and winners from the Greater Union Awards of the 1976 Sydney Film Festival, including Ande Reese’s TjintuPakani and Paul Winkler’s Red Church, a selection of films from the 1975 students at the Film and T.V. School, a recent documentary on Timor, more Petty, more local women’s films, and just about more of everything.

On the exhibition side of things, we have The Night Cleaners — Part 1 just in from the Perth Film Festival (going on to Melbourne Co-op in late September and Adelaide and Brisbane sometime later), plus a program of films entitled “Our Bodies Ourselves” w hi c h d e a l s wi th a s p e c t s of menstruation, masturbation, and self health (including Jane Oehr’s film Seeing Red and Hearing Blue made with members of the Melbourne Women’s Theatre Group), coming up in September.

On the administrative side of things, we have commissioned Barrett Hodson to do an in-depth study and to prepare a report on minority distribution and exhibition in Australia, following his earlier one.

Membership, new titles, rentals, and attendances are rising all the time, but inflation seems to be taking its toll. So hire or attend a good Australian film from your local Co-op today.

1

6

mm X

1

Dear Sir, Our Association, which comprises most of the production houses operating within South Australia, would like to point out that the statement made by Mr. Richardson (as reported in Hansard of the 1st June, 1976) is completely erroneous, and his argument is in no way supported by the members of this Association.

Mr. Richardson made the following statement — “ Since the honorable member for Melbourne did not mention it, I shall do so, and I hope the Victorian Film Corporation will not be modelled on that of South Australia, which is a model of centralized socialism. If that were done, the Corporation would become a monolithic bureaucracy headed by a ‘Commissar of Culture’ and it would compete against existing producers” .

South Australian Film Producers Association, whose members have had dealings with the South Australian Film Corporation since the Corporation’s in­

5

ception four years ago, do not recognise the SAFC as a 'monolithic bureaucracy’ competing against local producers.

The stated aim of the SAFC is to create a viable film industry within South Australia. It has created work oppor­ tunities here and has nurtured and back­ ed the local film producers.

The SAFC’s present policy is to sub­ contract all documentary film work out to local industry where possible and the Corporation does not act as a production house but more as an agent and catalyst.

Its policies regarding feature films is to try to have films produced within South Australia, and to have the films crewed by local technicians whenever possible.

We can in no way interpret this policy as “centralized socialism” .

This Association has an active working relationship with the Corporation and we appreciate the fact that the SAFC is play­ ing the major role in creating a viable in­ dustry here.

We strongly deplore Mr. Richardson’s unfounded statements.

Yours faithfully, Milton B. Ingerson, President, South Australian Film Producers Association.

mins=$

IT’S LESS THAN YOU THINK

ACME FILMS DOCUMENTARIES, ADS AND PROMOTIONAL FILMS GORDON GLENN KEITH ROBERTSON ON THE TRACK OF UNKNOWN ANIMALS

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TRUGANINI — THE LAST OF THE TASMANIANS

PPA5075

Rathe introduce two craftsman cam erasD S8 and 16mm.

Both are professional.

Possibly the latest electronic Duolight cameras from the Pathe cockerell look like ugly ducklings, but look at their capabilities: The electronic double super 8 version takes one hundred feet of film which after processing becomes two hundred feet in the super 8 format.

The 16mm version of the camera is similar in design to the DS8.

Either camera will take an auxiliary 400 foot magazine with its own motor and automatic camera connections that will provide long running capability.

The new exposure meter has no moving needle, but solid state electronics with LED display. The CdS cell is behind the lens and gives accurate measurement whether the camera is running or not. It drives the lens

DEPEND O N IT 478—Cinema Papers, September

diaphragm automatically through a servo motor, so you can concentrate on filming.

The meter is also coupled with f.p.s. control, the variable shutter opening and film sensitivity (10-400 ASA).

The speed range is remarkable: 8, 18, 25, 48, 64 and 80 fps, forward or reverse, with variable shutter opening for lap dissolves.

Two sync sound systems: A built-in pilot tone, 50Hz at 25 fps for use with pilot tone tape recorders and single frame pulse sync for use with the new pulse systems. No extras to buy.

Lenses are interchangeable, using a threelens turret that takes standard C mount lenses. You can also use some still camera lenses with adapters. Choose a lens to create the effect you want. You might like to start

IT'S FROM PH OTIM PORT

with Angenieux's new f 1.2 zoom lens, with focal lengths from 6 to 80mm. That's a 13.3 to 1 zoom ratio.

Viewing is reflex through a ground glass screen with hairlines. It also provides an exposure indicator, battery charge level indicator and T V framing limits. Compare its compact dimensions and weight (7!bs) with what you're carrying around.

Now which is the ugly duckling?

When writing for literature, please enclose 30 cent stamp. Photimport (Aust) Pty Ltd. Melbourne: 69 Nicholson St, East Brunswick. 38 6922. Sydney: 17 Alberta St. 26 2926. Brisbane: 244 St Paul's Terrace, Fortitude Valley* 52 8188. Adelaide: L H Marcus Pty Ltd, 242 Pirie St. 23 2946.

Perth: L Gunzburg Pty Ltd, 339 Charles St, North Perth. 28 3377.

GAY CINEM A

Gay Cinema

ty came in 1964 when he was busted in a dope raid. Hollywood has always known how to deal with transgressors. Chaplin, Flynn, Mitchum and Brando had enough aggression to survive their sex and drug scandals. But non-conformist radicals, especially if they were women or gay, were better targets. Frances Farmer, for ex­ ample, who, because of her sexual and political opposition to the studio image created for her, was quite literally and ruthlessly driven to madness and death.

So, while Shirley Temple is now an am­ bassador, Frances Farmer is in her grave and Tommy Kirk was dropped like a hot mauve potato. There’s a moral in that somewhere.

Continued from P.119 Rock Hudson, amid all this turmoil, was the very embodiment of Mr Normal, just as Doris Day was Mrs. His heroic jaw, soft bovine eyes and broad smooth muscles made him the sort of fellow who aptly incarnated every American Mr Normal, from Hemingway’s heroes (A Farewell to Arms) to Ferber’s Giant. He shocked the pan­ ts off everyone by his Californian coming out, and then went on with his image unaltered to do his television series and lay all them pretty maids in a row, a prime example of a screen image, perhaps because it was so bland and undefined, being unchanged by reality.

James Dean found his way up through the acting jungle by privately screwing a series of minor directors and producers (male). Later he was to consolidate it by publicly squiring a cloud of studio starlets (female). Known familiarly as “The Human Ash-Tray’’, by reason of his obliging SM practices with glowing cigarettes, he was an habitue of leather bars and Malibu gay parties. It was at one of these, the night before his death, that his current lover demanded that he come out completely and stop using women as a public front.'Desperate, Dean preferred speed, arrogance and the crushing metallic embrace of his Porsche.

Throughout his career, he behaved like a pig to most of his male co-stars, straight or gay.

Dick Davolos (his brother Aron in East of Eden) and Rock Hudson (Bick in Giant) both grew to detest him; only with Sal Mineo (his appropriately platonic friend Plato in Rebel) did he manage an affectionate relationship that ex­ tended beyond the screen.

Dean’s alienated gayness was used in a way typical of the 1950s. He was the wonderful Janus-faced boy, the “ rebel without a cause’’ whose rebellion could be seen alternately as justified or neurotic. Hollywood, always more prudish than Broadway, never spelled out the precise sexual nature of this revolt. That had been left to his stage performance in Gide’s pederastic L'lmmoraliste, where his interpre­ tation off the seductive servant-boy Bachir had first caught the critics’ eye.

On the screen he was the archetypal screwed up straight adolescent — still a bit of a puppy, so it didn’t matter if he horsed around with the boys. But fundamentally, he was to be shown struggling with a heterosexual identity which was inhibited by parental turpitude (“mother’s a whore” ) or reaction (“ father’s a turd” ), threatened by aggressive peer-groups and allow­ ed to find expression only in secret play (the barn-games in Eden, the house exploring in Rebel). In Rebel, the love between the men almost surfaces in these games, though a woman always presides as chaperon.

In a typical scene, Plato spoofs the role of an estate agent. Judy (Natalie Wood) and Jim(Dean), pretend to be a young couple renting a house, Jimmie parodying a Mr Magoo voice for the occasion — Jim Backus, who created Magoo, was playing Dean’s screen father.

In such a game, there will be no more fathers.

By the time of Giant, this adventurous youthful schizophrenic develops instead into its possible adult stereotype — a repressed, withdrawn, ruthless Howard Hughes. Dean plays the part with chilling disintegration.

Most of the passionate same-sex feeling in his films explodes like a volcano in the scenes with fathers or father figures. This powerful expres­ sion of father-fucking (usually confined in Hollywood to younger boys and arms round the shoulders) began with his sobbing and slobber­ ing all over Raymond Massey in East of Eden.

Dean apparently pulled this one on the astonish­ ed elder actor without warning or rehearsal, and Kazan printed the take of his genuine surprise

Ill WAYS OUT

Rock Hudson prepares to lay one of the pretty maids (Gretchen Burrell). Roger Vadim’s Pretty Maids All In A Row.

and horror to make one of the best shots of the film. The electrifying scene with Massey was followed by an equally torrid physical episode with Backus in Rebel, and the shambling putouts and impotence of Giant.

The sexual story is always the same: a frustrated love which can find its only catharsis in tears and rage. Its prognosis is oblivion.

Farm-kid, athlete, sophomore, existentialist, but fatally blond and gay, the sensual golden boy had been fist-fucked up and down Hollywood Boulevard, metaphorically by the studios and literally by his gay brothers. Dean, like a good actor, studied his part and wiped himself out.

Tommy Kirk was one of the Disney kid-stars of the 1960s, the sort of boy you could see being adorable to a marshall in Gunsmoke, doting on a dog in Old Yeller, or confronting sea-lions in The Swiss Family Robinson.

Needless to say, he never played a gay kid.

How could Marshall Dillon or Papa Robinson cope with such a freak? But that’s what he was.

Instead, when, with broken voice and downy cheek, the demonstrable time came to give some indication of hi? adolescent sexuality, he was, of course, used by the studio as another piece of straight propaganda for the drive-in ,set. In this wonderful model of reality, couples at drive-ins watched couples at beaches, and monogamy flourished. Paired off with Annette Funicello, jiving with bleached starlets, Kirk dragged his rebellious arse round those resolutely hetero­ sexual beach parties of the Californian sixties.

Maybe in reality the Beach Boys were just chucking their last joint in the sea and getting into coke. Maybe covens of gáy surfies were hav­ ing it off in the sandhills at Monterey. But in these bromides, contrivances of summer ex­ istence for middle-class American youth, coke still comes in bottles, and sex means dating and making goo-goo eyes behind canoes.

After mugging his way cutely through The Absent Minded Professor, The Shaggy Dog, Village of the Giants, Pajama Party and Catalina Caper, Kirk finally had enough of the false and exploitative way he had been used as an actor. In spite of the helpful advice of friends in the industry (“ Don’t admit that!” , “Are you crazy?” ) he told Disney he was gay, and for his pains, was moralized at and fired. Disney’s sonin-law even personally and genially condescend­ ed to him about his “ problems” .

Proof of his satanic and un-American depravi­

Actors and directors had two ways out of the conventionalizing and normalizing patterns of Hollywood. One lay in remaining in the U.S. and going underground, and the other in seeking out more sympathetic sexual atmospheres abroad, notably in France.

Thus it was, for example, that the trio of Kenneth Anger, Curtis Harrington and Gregory Markipolous found a master in Cocteau, im­ itating his style and imagery right down to hands and statues, and paying him the tribute of a whole school of mythological film.

The most free of gay films, that is the highest in erotic content and existential form, were naturally those in which homosexual directors and actors were able to work together without the interference of an alienating production system. And of these the most successful were at the same time the spearhead of all avant garde cinema.

Whether by analogy from heteroxexual ex­ perience, which at many points suffers the same kinds of difficulties and oppressions, and en­ joys similar expressions and delights, or from the strong erotic male content of films like those of Lethem and Muehl, gay cinema must play its part in the general liberation of the libido. A man and a young boy tongue-kissing in Arrabal’s Viva La Muerte transcends a purely hetero- or homosexual cinema and leads us into that world of the polymorphous perverse which we’ve all known since the moment of birth.

It is in this direction — the direction of Brakhage’s Flesh in the Morning, Genet’s Chant D’Amour, Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Warhol’s My Hustler, Broughton’s The Bed — that the future lies. And for that matter, two other genres, gay porn and gay political cinema, lead to the same point of celebration, awareness and change. Good porn like Wake­ field Poole’s Bijou and Boys in the Sand, and the movement films, usually documentary, deserve research and interpretation in themselves, not merely as sociological symptoms.

Mainstream cinema will inevitably continue its boring shuffle towards sexual enlightenment.

Meanwhile, gay directors, actors and crews within it, even the greatest, will continue to mis­ take their fake professional and class situations for their real ones.

Murnau, for example, disgracefully colla­ borated in the chastifying of women, (especially if they were themselves really homosexual like Janet Gaynor in Sunrise, 1928), a prime example of the way in which gay male artists may be im­ pressed into the service of their straight brothers, much as eunuchs were once used to keep harems.

This sorry position, worse for the eunuch even than for the woman, is one in which the cinema has maintained its gay servants, castrated and serving an essentially heterosexist society, whatever position, wealth or artistry they mean­ while achieved. The latter were the sops by which homosexual directors and actors were fed and choked. When will we throw it all up? ★ Cinema Papers, September— 179

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN FILMM AKERS

Australian Women Filmmakers Continued from P. 141 In the early 1950s, she got a job with Lee Robinson and Chips Rafferty on their new ven­ ture into feature films — Southern Inter­ national. She did continuity on the first film, and was associate producer on the second. 'She became co-producer on all their features, and co-wrote some of the screenplays. She then freelanced for a number of American film com­ panies making films on location here.

Cavill went to Canada in 1964 and worked for the largest commercial film company in Canada — ASP Productions. She then toured the world making CBC specials, documentaries and educational films. John McCallum asked her to join him and Lee Robinson in Fauna Produc­ tions, then starting the Skippy series: she became producer of the series. They were turned out at the rate of one episode a week, and, conse­ quently, she had to write the scripts when the commissioned ones failed to turn up on time.

She was co-producer with Lee Robinson on Fauna’s first feature, The Intruders (1969), and producer on the second, Nickel Queen (1971).

She produced Fauna’s three television series — Barrier Reef, Boney and Shannon’s Mob — all made on film. Such a background of experience is rare in Australia.

In addition, Joy Cavill is a scriptwriter, and has recently spent more than a year working on her own project, a screenplay for a feature film based on the life of swimming champion, Dawn Fraser — Dawn! It will be a personal story, rather than a sporting one, and the few people who have read the screenplay describe it as very moving. However, illness has forced her to post­ pone the production until 1977.

Joy Cavill says her career has not been easy.

She has often found it exhausting, even frightening. She says she can’t help being con­ scious that for a woman to succeed she has to be a good deal better than a man, and, as many have discovered in organizations, there are men at the top who, if they were women, would not be there at all, because they wouldn’t be considered good enough.

It is not surprising that women are beginning to by-pass the film world’s traditionally male­ dominated avenues and take their own initiative.

In 1974, Margaret Fink, with no previous ex­ perience in films, but with a background in art and music, produced a feature film, The Removalists, based on David Williamson’s play.

She acknowledges the help of her husband, Leon, with the business side of setting-up the production, but she closely supervised the film itself. She also initiated the overseas marketing, and went through the gruelling — and humiliating — experience of the Cannes Marche on her own.

Pat Lovell, with no one but herself, and with a career background of almost continuous acting, television compering and producing, took an op­ tion on the book P ic n ic A t H a n g in g R o c k , com­ missioned the screenplay from Cliff Green, chose the director, Peter Weir, and formed a company to produce the film. She then acted as executive producer, with the McElroy brothers as producers. Picnic At Hanging Rock has been one of the biggest success stories in Australian production, both artistically and at the box­ office. This year, she produced another feature, Break Of Day, shot in Victoria from a Cliff Green screenplay,*and directed by Ken Hannam.

Pat supports two children.

Both Lovell and Fink had to overcome many difficulties endemic to the feature film world, but men have to overcome them too. The in­ teresting thing was that they didn’t wait to be asked to help men. Instead, they enlisted men to help them.

180—Cinema Papers, September

During my second six years at Film Australia Jill Robb was appointed last year to the board 1 worked mainly on sponsored films. The only of the new Australian Film Commission as a three scripts I wrote for unsponsored films all part-time commissioner, the only woman won Awgie Awards — The Pictures That Moved representative of the industry. She is, at present, (1968), The Passionate Industry (1972), both marketing manager of the South Australian documentaries on the history of Australian Film Corporation, but she has had a great deal cinema, and Paddington Lace (1970), a fictional of experience in production as well. Originally in satire on inner-suburban rehabilitation. I also public relations and fashion promotion, she directed The Passionate Industry.

I decided to leave Film Australia, because I packaged television shows in Adelaide for her own firm, then went into film and television found myself doing more and more purely ad­ production on a freelance basis. She has been ministrative work, and also because my interests production secretary, casting director and con­ were turning to fictional films and the mass tinuity girl on feature films, documentaries and audiences. Film is essentially a mass com­ television series. She was assistant producer on munication medium. From a writing point of the Skippy series for Fauna. In 1972, she was ap­ view, documentaries take a tremendous amount pointed an executive producer for the South of research and time and subtle manipulation of Australian Corporation, and produced a number sometimes intractable material, yet com­ of sponsored documentaries. She was also paratively few people ever see them. Inciden­ associate producer on the feature The Fourth tally, the first equal pay packet I received at Wish.

Film Australia was also the last before I left.

Anthony Buckley, for whom I had written in Other women who worked at Film Aus­ my own time the commentary for his film on tralia in the early days were Roslyn Frank Hurley, Snow, Sand and Savages (1971), Poignant, Ann Gurr and Judith Adamson. then asked me to write the screenplay for a Roslyn Poignant worked in the cutting-rooms, feature film he proposed to produce, based on edited films and directed an educational film the autobiography, C a d d ie . before she married and went to live abroad. She Once again it took a man who had worked in now works mainly on photographic assignments the British industry (although Buckley is with her husband, Axel. Ann Gurr became an Australian), and who had seen women accepted extremely capable editor. She now has four at higher levels, to take a step which few other children and works occasionally on contract for Australian producers would have done. Anthony Film Australia. Judith Adamson has been back Buckley also made me a partner in the produc­ at Film Australia as an assistant for five years. tion company, on equal footing with the direc­ She was research and editing assistant on The tor, Donald Crombie, and himself — again an Passionate Industry, and now works closely with uncharacteristic action.

Ian Dunlop on his anthropological films.

Caddie was written in 1974 and produced in As for myself, I applied for a trainee position 1975. It is now on its way to becoming one of the at Film Australia after leaving Melbourne highest grossing films in Australian film history.

University, but was offered a job as a secretary, I have since written another feature, The Picture “because that’s the only opening at present”. A Show Man, and am also producing it, with John young man asked me recently how he could go Power as director. about getting a job in films. I said to him: “Can you type and do shorthand?” He reeled back in Any impression of a plenitude of women astonishment, but I assured him that that used producers, directors and writers given by this to be standard questioning for a woman seeking listing would be false. It is possible to list the to enter a traditionally male field. women individually only because, over the two After a year, I moved over to the cutting- or three decades to the 1970s, they were so rare. rooms, taking a drop in salary to do so. At that In reality, in numbers and status, women in time, women were not allowed to be production Australian film production have, until recently, assistants, because it involved going away on followed much the same pattern as women in location, where presumably a nameless fate other traditionally male occupations. For the awaited them. When, after three years as a most part, they have been accepted only in cutting assistant, Stanley Hawes asked me to lower-rung positions, or as assistants to men, direct a film, the only experience of shooting I even, if some of these jobs require intensive skills, had was some continuity and assistant’s work such as production secretaries, cutters, negaround Sydney. In the next two years I made matchers, continuity girls. The few women who seven films — five educational films and two have risen above these levels have needed rather documentaries. As well as directing, I wrote the special ability and determination. scripts, did production management, and, The fact that at Film Australia, from the because I was rarely given one, did all the 1950s to the mid-1960s, there was usually one business normally attended to by an assistant. I woman or another making films was due to also edited the films and cut the negatives. This Stanley Hawes. But from 1966 — when Rhonda intensive experience in production proved in­ Small left — until 1972, when I directed The valuable in my later work as a scriptwriter.

Passionate Industry, not a single woman directed I left filmmaking for marriage and spent the a film at Film Australia (apart from a twonext 10 years out of films. I had ideas at the minute anti-drug commercial made by Meg beginning of writing and setting up a children’s Stewart, in 1971). Those years coincided with feature, but the difficulties seemed and, I am the waning influence of Hawes. The producers sure would have proved, insuperable. There was became more powerful, and although individual no government assistance of any kind whatever producers came and went, together they remain­ for independent filmmaking before 1970. ed steadfastly a male enclave.

In 1963, I began to write scripts for Film Part 3, to be written by Meg Stewart for the Australia on a freelance basis, and, as I started next issue, will deal with the impact in a few to gain a bit more confidence, felt I wanted to go short years of the women’s movement, and the back to directing. However, there was an oppor­ effect of the expansion of opportunities for tunity as a staff scriptwriter, and it seemed the women, as well as for men, through the new con­ more humane and practical choice with my cept of government assistance to filmmaking. family obligations, as well as the more certain one. This job was the first in which I had ever Acknowledgements: My thanks to the women who earned a reasonable salary in my professional supplied information about themselves, and my apologies to career, though it was still only 85 per cent of the any women whom I may have inadvertently omitted. ★ male rate.

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KRZYSZTOF ZANUSSI

Krzysztof Zanussi

Continued from P.137 The readi ng I get from “Illumination” is that the solution of Jan’s search for some absolute truth or knowledge lies within his relationships with people — like in the scene at the end — rather than with any ideological or cultural goal. Do you agree?

No I don’t. I think that it comes out of all these elements, but one which was very strong was the Faustian element — which is purely cultural. He was, I thought, a varia­ tion on the Faust legend. Faust strongly reacted to his personal ex­ perience, and Marguerite was part of it. But there was something more metaphysical in Jan’s belief in the necessity of determining one’s terms of existence and terms of ul­ timate truth. This is all very cultural. I don’t think on our animal instinct level that we really need to understand and question our sense of existence.

But for Jan there doesn’t seem to have been any absolute truth . . .

Yes, he doesn’t find it, but you know absolute truth is a term like “ horizon” : you may believe in the horizon or not. Most people would rather believe in it because they can observe it, though they never can reach it. In urban life people tend to forget the existence of the horizon,

but you have to believe there is a something, a goal, even though one never approaches it.

Absolute truth is a myth, so it cannot be reached, it cannot even be approached. But as long as there is a longing for it, we are dynamic and we move forward. It may be absolute truth or it may be absolute justice, or absolute friendship or absolute love. If there is a need, as Plato said, then there must be a something which created this need, because if we haven’t experienced it, if we have never seen it, why do we want it? This is a beautiful and poetic conception of where “ab­ solute” comes from, but, irrespec­ tive of where it comes from, as long as there is hope, life makes sense — if one loses hope, life loses all sense.

That is a view a lot of people would strongly disagree with, because a search for some sort of absolute can cause a great deal of misery. It can be a very disillusion­ ing search . . .

Well, if you are disillusioned you are giving up and that is sad. But there has to be drop-outs along the way, where people conform with their state of knowledge and with the world as it is, because an ab­ solute- is not only an intellectual goal, it can be a practical goal — also impossible to achieve. Ab­ solute justice and absolute equality are just such goals and some people get disillusioned with these as well.

But without illusions, without hope, you can’t do anything. There is il­ lusion, or there is cynicism and complete surrender, an approval of the existing world as it is, an at­ titude I consider very ugly.

You seem to place a distinction between those things intellectual and one’s emotional needs or desires or reactions. For example, the way you were talking before about bestial, basic human urges. That suggested a distance between an animal level and the nobler preoccupations of the mind . . .

Well, this is a tradition from the nineteenth century romanticism which counterpoints mind-intellect with the emotions. I don’t think our contemporary knowledge of human beings strengthens this counter­ point greatly. I would say both are part of the same structure — all our thoughts have emotional colour, all our words have emotional colour— and if one studies semantics one con­ centrates on meanings and feelings at the same time. If you look at the history of language you will find that there are many words which are evolving quickly and getting colour: a purely descriptive word which was once neutral is fastly becoming colourful. “ Revolution” after the French Revolution was c o n s i d e r e d s y n o m o u s with “ anarchy” or “disaster” , now you sell a car by c a l l i ng it a “ revolutionary” model.

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It is a very good question.

Firstly, I had written the script for a particular actress because she was useful in expressing a regularity of

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182—Cinema Papers, September

In “The Balance”, Marta leaves her husband but returns at the end.

How much was this a decision made by the character, having a life of her own, or a decision made by you as the scriptwriter? Because ul­ timately, the film makes a point about the possible destruction one can cause to others in a relationship and, most importantly, to oneself. .

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“ Revolutionary” is now supposed to mean “good” . This is a reflection of how a word is evolving and how feelings are evolving.

I think there is nothing totally new being introduced into our lives, we always continue living as a kind.

I was recently fascinated in anthology and the biological sciences which describe the nature of our instincts or bestial nature. As you know, most of our emotions may be observed among animals.

The joy of your dog which meets you after an absence is identical to the joy of your child when you come back after a long day at work.

Your maternal / paternal feelings, family feelings, hurt feelings, hate, xenophobic hate, aggression — all these elements may be beautifully observed in animals. Self-intellect is probably the only element which is new to human kind. Consequent­ ly I am very interested in it.

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ZOOM (AVSTAAC/Àf

KRZYSZTOF ZANUSSI

But with a professional actress it is a most cruel operation because you impose a discipline, yet at the same time ask her to look in the mirror and check if something is correct or not — and that is very bad. I think she was extremely unhappy playing in The Balance, but I learnt something out of it and she did, too.

I want to work with her again, hopefully.

Whereas in “Illumination” you used a non-professional . . .

The extraordinary Maja Komorowska in her first role for Zannussi, with Daniel Olbrychski) . Family Life.

life that other characters would not have made so clear. She was an actress for whom a certain kind of social involvement was natural.

I knew the result in this calcula­ tion must be as I expected: that she would have to come back, though I understand perfectly that it makes something specific out of art; that in terms of, let us say, sociological and moralistic explanation it is never universal, because what is good for one person is not necessarily good for another. I wouldn’t suggest the same ending if I had another actress, another character, another face.

Within this particular calculation that is art, we have to calculate with determined elements, if we change an element, the rule doesn’t apply any more.

You have used Maja Komorowska a lot in your films and she is, quite obviously, an extraor­ dinary actress . . .

Maja was a very important dis­ covery for me and probably I would have been making other films if I hadn’t met her, simply because ac­ tors are tools of our expression. If I want to say certain things, then I have to have certain actors to ex­ press them.

1 met her, as a matter of fact, when I was testing out actors for my first film, The Structure of Crystals. I knew from the beginn­ ing that she was not good for the part of the wife because if I had made The Structure of Crystals with her, the meaning of the whole film would have changed. Irrespec­ tive of whatever I would put in the dialogue, everyone would unders­ tand that this man stayed in the country because of his wife — she would have been such a strong per­ sonality.

Now in Family Life, when Maja worked for me for the first time, there .was a bit of improvisation. I would lead her up to a moment of emotional climax and then leave her uncontrolled, so she could do it spontaneously. Some actors took advantage of this technique, some did not, but she did it well. It was definitely a very very moving scene

but it is not in the film. I had to cut it for a very simple reason that — and though you would understand this as a filmmaker, it was very dif­ ficult to explain to an actress — the scene was too moving and too strong. In other words, it was too good. And being too good it would have ruined the whole structure of the story. The audience’s attention would have been totally taken up by a side character and the further development of her brother wouldn’t have interested anybody since he is already such a weak character.

The weakness of the script was that it was written in the first person — I wrote it as short novel — and whenever there is “ I” , there is nothing to act, because it is all from his point of view. Conse­ quently, there is very little room for an actor to express himself. So, I had to cut out this scene with Maja and shoot it again in winter — and our winter is a serious matter. It was shot in snow with artificial flowers, artificial grass and all my actors freezing. These are minor problems that we sometimes face when shooting, but I felt I should somehow compensate Maja for this loss. So I gave her a greater chance of improvisation with Behind the Wall.

As I learnt more about her, I in­ vented a part for her in Balance, which is very close to her private life, and which I don’t think is par­ ticularly good. It is a big disadvan­ tage for an actor, because an actor is supposed to portray somebody else. Maja was here somehow portraying herself in a natural situation and she was very limited.

Later I could see there was something absent and that it was a total miscalculation from the author’s point-of-view. By being fascinated by her personality I had forgotten about her craft and I had left her very little room for ex­ pression, for creation. I just wanted to follow her behaviour patterns, her mannerisms of speech, and even her ideas.

If she had been an amateur actress it would have worked perfectly because that would have been all she could have provided.

Yes, because he was almost iden­ tical to the character. What is even more dramatic is that in real life he concluded his biography in a very dramatic way. During the film he became infected by climbing and also partly victimized by the myth he had created through the film.

He joined a Polish Himalaya ex­ pedition and then, just one year and a half ago, he was frozen to death.

There was some drama involved in it which makes it even more dis­ turbing and, at the same time, more fascinating. His body has been found and his case analyzed very carefully by the other members of the expedition and it seems that his last decision, the last direction in which he was going, indicated that he felt responsible for another chap who had withdrawn a few metres earlier without telling anyone. And as the remaining two of them were walking, this chap, who was not a very good climber — he was only recently trained — felt responsible and said: “ I must check what happened to the other one” . His companion told him that it made no sense and it was absolutely un­ reasonable, but he was stubborn; he did it, and he paid with his life. Yet it is somehow very optimistic because I imagine that a man freezing, a man scared to death, should act like an animal, should think about his self-defence and self-survival. But his case indicates that maybe he did not. There are several similar cases we know from concentration camps where some people saved not only the dignity of themselves but the dignity of our kind, and made decisions on an ethical basis against the instincts of survival. And this is the only proof that something has been achieved in this evolutionary process, otherwise we are just a mere extension of animal life.

You ask about him . . . I think about it very much because he was so much younger than me and it was quite unexpected. His fascina­ tion in death, which you see in the film, which is probably also my fascination, has turned out to be so very relevant.

How do you, as a filmmaker in Poland, continue to make films which to us are not essentially com­ mercial?

It is very hard to explain because there are two interfering elements: difference of systems and difference of cultures. You are an extension of

the Anglo-Saxon or American con­ ception of life, we are not — we are Europeans. You are living in a capitalist country, and we are not.

Both these things are responsible for totally different outlooks on things. You are probably aware of socio-economic differences, 'while our production is totally subsidized.

We get our money regularly and it is not connected with the income films make. It is easier to explain — or more difficult to explain — that this conception is considered completely natural, because film, and indeed all our cultural needs, are considered elementary needs, whereas in this country they are not.

If you look at semantics again, when you say “success” in your language you naturally think “commercial success” , whereas for us it is a correct pattern of speech to say a film was “very popular but totally unsuccessful” . It means that it was stupid, bad. Of course many people liked it, but it is not quantity that decides. We have in our mind other criteria like, for example: Would people remember this film?

Would this film or this novel in­ fluence their life or their attitudes?

If it doesn’t, it does not matter if they have not seen it or not — they may all have seen it and forgotten it. So you understand that the fact that films are subsidized is natural for us, something that should be done. It happens in other countries in Europe, even in non-socialist countries like Norway, Sweden or France. There is a tendency to sub­ sidize films now because there has always been a tradition of subsidiz­ ing opera; but opera is fulfilling the needs of a very small minority of that society.

Film is more important in terms of health of the society, in terms of the proper functioning of the society. From that point of view, we have a chance of getting money to make our next film each time without many problems. I have to have a script approved and this is another chapter because what­ ever is subsidized by the State is controlled by the State and the State would not permit me to make things which express ideas con­ tradictory to the policy of the State.

But there is a certain margin of tolerance and freedom of ex­ pression, which I try to explore in my films. ★ FILMOGRAPHY Shorts: 1966 Smierc Prowincjala (Death o f a Provincial) 1967 Twarza W Twarz (Face to Face) 1968 Zaliczenie (Attestation) 1970 Gory O Zemierzchu (Mountains at Dusk) 1971 Rola (Role) 1972 Hipoteza (Hypothesis) Features: 1969 Struktura Krysztalu (The Structure of Crystals) 1971 Zycie Rodzinne (Family Life) 1971 Za Sciana (Behind the Wall) 1973 lluminacja (Illumination) 1974 The Catamount Killing 1975 Bilans Kwartalny (Quarterly Balance / The Balance)

Cinema Papers, September— 183

STRAUB/HUILLET

Straub/Huillet

“ Boll saw the film the day before his publisher, and he said nothing. He went away and he — nothing. He said — tomorrow you will have to show the film to my publisher, ON THE RELATIONSHIP TO THE SOURCE Straub frequently stresses that film is a MATERIAL and you will have to make concessions. The materialist art, that the filmmaker’s choice of publ i sher, after one hour, said to raw stock and camera size must be an exact The Straubs’ films usually start from an existing us, ‘ Ah, now I know why Boll does not decision, and not a compromise, and that a film text; but the approach varies, between the kind like the film, I think he’s afraid of himself. . . shot in 35 mm should be shown in 35 mm, rather of use that is made of a story by Boll, and the you make a superb film . . . ’ Boll can be very than with 16 mm prints, as is frequently the case service that is rendered, so to speak, to a work strong, but each time that he writes

by Corneille, or Schoenberg. with his films! something strong, he puts gravy all around “There are works where I, as a small “ I want to say that — as is often overlooked . . . Lots of it . . . There are two things that ‘Straub’, wouldn’t assume the right to take in America — that film is material, is a are in the film but not in the book — the new­ something out — neither in Corneille materialist art. In America, the only 35 mm spaper clippings, and the war footage. And (Othon), nor in Moses and Aaron. Therefore, projectors are owned by the industry, which when Boll saw the film, he said, ‘It’s too long, I take the things completely and show them in has oppressed everything that is not the in­ you have to cut out the newspapers and the a way where the people can judge them or dustry . . . This does not mean that one war’.” (laughter). reject them and though the film is partly in Not Reconciled (1965) should despise shooting in 16 mm. (For ex­ contradiction the work is introduced in its en­ ample, Straub refused to use 35 mm for mm Kodak Double X; Arri Blimp 120; tirety to the people. On the contrary, in 5335 Othon; he used 16 mm Eastmancolor stock, min.

Cost approx. $20,000. Based on Billiards at half past nine, I took the things Billiards at since he required hand-held camera in a small Noon, by Heinrich Boll. which I really thought were the best texts, the number of set-ups. In the case of Chronicle, The break-down of shots and comparison with most beautiful . . . Even in the novel of Brecht and Moses and Aaron, we would rather have the original narrative an appendix to Richard (History Lessons), I judge the text we did Roud’s “Cinema One”isseries waited 10 more years than shoot them in book on Straub — select as among the strongest I know.”

16 mm.” and is the best thing about the book. From this On the question of black and white, or colour: one can judge the extreme ellipses of the film’s “ It is much easier to make films in black and ON ‘THE SYSTEM’ OF THE INDUSTRY narrative structure. The film was made as an white because one arrives more directly at a Straub remains scrupulously outside it. The attempt to show how Nazism was not an aberra­ certain abstraction. What one strives to do in films are each extraordinarily low-budget (and tion of German history, but a continuum that making a film is to start from the concrete in the story of the budgeting for each'is extraor­ reaches unbroken through generations; but order to arrive at a certain abstraction, and dinary); there is no compromise made to finan­ “Nazism” is not overtly referred to in the film, with colour it’s more difficult, because colour ciers or distributors, even though this usually en­ just as it is not referred to in Germany. is, so to speak, more naturalistic. Colour tails waiting years between the idea and the Watching the film demands great energy, and makes you search, makes you probe deeper. realization of the films, and often entails a more the reward is an extreme simplicity and a kind of One could say that black and white is a little modest life-style for the Straubs than is enjoyed relief from all the traditional ‘crutches’ of too easy, colour requires that one makes by the lowliest member of the crew they hire. classical film continuity. It turns Straub’s princi­ more demands on oneself, in order not to fall “ In the cinema, by being satisfied with simply ple that film is the condensation of time into a back into the picturesque . . . For the viewer, opposing the system, one runs the risk of political and historical principle, made concrete. colour is easier, but it’s more difficult for the strengthening it. (In Germany, for example, Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) person using it.”

Bertelsmann-Knonzern, who, along with the 35 mm Kodak Four X; Mitchell 300 Blimp; The material sensuousness of colour film is Americans, nearly monopolizes the distribu­ 93 min. Based on the diary of Bach’s wife, Anna taken to an extreme on Othon. tion of so-called commercial films, is thinking Magdalena Bach. “ If one is touched (by the sensual impressions of a plan, exactly parallel naturally, for the The death of a child, and the constant lack of the film) then the impressions are very distribution of underground films.) It is and lateness of money from patrons and com­ strong, nearly barbaric. The colour shocks necessary to suppress the system (in the same missions, are domestic counterpoints to the from one shot to another. The reason for that way, the police, prisons and armies): its music of the film. This was the first period film; is we shoot always chronologically. Othon parasites and pimps (publicists, producers, for Straub, the wigs were a kind of mask that set was strictly shot in order, which means that distributors, writers, functionaries, dubbers, up a contradiction with the unmade-up faces; he when you shoot and the sun is there with an representatives, salesmen, exporters/im- was pleased to allow the tulle foundation of the ultra-white sky, and then you make the porters . '. . art thieves and exploiters), who wigs remain visible, “so that the wig is recogniz­ counter-shot, the sky will be dark blue. And detest the public and the filmmaker . . . In the ed as such” . that no cameraman will do.” meantime, rather than attacking Cannes, or “ First of all, it is rather picturesque, Venice, or New York, or London (and why something that distracts; on the other hand ON FILM ACTING not Oberhausen? and wouldn’t it be better to something that makes one concentrate on Straub’s kind of film acting is totally non­ increase the number of festivals in the other things. Because it does the opposite, of naturalistic, and the movement and enunciation working-class sections and in the country?) let distracting. Exactly like masks in the Greek of his actors is one of the things that first us prevent the dubbing of our films, let us de­ theatre. So that the facial expression is shocks, and then takes on an austere kind of mand better projections and better prints : . . enhanced, because one sees only a sea of mov­ beauty. and let us attack our own aesthetic and moral ing wigs, one concentrates on the point in the “ Instead of wishing to create an impression, cliches.” middle where something happens. Where all an improvization, the actor should rather If there is still room for doubt, this was his com­ the threads run together. Then one sees the show what is the truth of the situation — that ment on Dreyer, similarly placed (or displaced) hands move. Then one is no longer disturbed he is quoting the text, that these are not his in terms of the system.

by Griffith, ‘What the modern movie lacks is words, coming from inside his head.” beauty, beauty from the moving wind in the “The fact that Dreyer was never able to The flat delivery somehow does not become a trees’. The wind is important in this film, the produce a film in colour (he had thought mannerism, however, partly because the ‘actors’ about it for more than 20 years), nor his film wigs and the costumes contribute towards are only professional film actors if it is a this, the wind is nothing but the spirit. A film on Christ (a profound revolt against the state professional, rather than a friend, or somebody and the origins of anti-Semitism) reminds us does not consist of images, that is something on the street, who proves to have the that we live in a society that is not worth a optical, but of ideas, and that is what moves recognizable face of the character at hand. In the these wigs, these hands . . . It is a film about frog’s fart.” case of Not Reconciled, for example: the wind. And the wind is precisely the work “ It was unusual for them (the audience) to see AN ANNOTATED FILMOGRAPHY of Bach . . . And, let’s say rather preten­ people (not actors) on the film speak as they Machorka-Muff (1963) tiously, the spirit. And the wind blows where speak — such as the old lady, or the 35 mm Kodak Double X; Arri Blimp 120; it will, and it is somehow concentrated here.” (illiterate) man in the boat at the beginning. 17 min. 33 sec. Cost: approx. $12,000; Based on The Bridegroom, the Comedienne, and the Pimp Such people usually have no right to be on the Hauptstadisches Journal, by Heinrich Boll. (1968) screen. People found it difficult to under­ Made as a protest against the rearming of West 35 mm Kodak Double X and 4 X; Arri Blimp stand, at first.”

Germany (as something imposed by other 300; 23 min. Incorporating a highly condensed (For a very full sense of the handling of actors by powers on an unwilling Germany). version of the play, Krankheit der Jugend, by the Straubs, and in fact of the entire mode of (“This film is so strong and direct; did Boll Ferdinand Bruckner, and excerpts from the operations during a 26-day shoot, for Moses and say anything about the theory behind its con­ poetry of Juan de la Cruz.

Aaron, the palimpsestic text, “A Work Journal struction?”)

The opening shot ‘opens the eyes’, in Straub’s of the Straub/Huillet film Moses and Aaron, terms; it is one of the most beautiful shots I have

by Gregory Woods/Notes on Gregory’s Work * In Enthusiasm, No. 1 ever seen: a tracking shot from the window of a Continued from P.130 ON A MATERIALIST ART

l<S4—Cinema Papers. September

Journal, by Daniele Hullet” is extraordinary and worthwhile reading.)*

STRA U B/HU ILLET

car, m oving down an ugly street, the Landsbergerstrasse in Munich, at night, past trucks, billboards, and the occasional prostitute; part of the way through, Bach’s Ascension Oratorio begins. The Film’s next part is the 10minute (single unbroken shot) version of the Bruckner play, arranged by Straub in a previous theatrical production. Then, a short Americangangster-film sequence, a kind of logical development of the melodrama. Finally, a wedding of two of the actors (the negro-Jewish bridegroom, and the former prostitute) and a recitation of the mystical poetry of St John of the Cross, as a kind of wedding hymn.

Othon (1969) 16 mm Eastmancolor 7254; Eclair-Coutant; 83 min. Cost approx. $68,000. Based on Othon,

by Pierre Corneille.

Tacitus’ history of Rome, via Corneille, via Straub — a kind of dialectic of textures of history, power relations, men and women relations. “ I had read the Corneille piece, badly, years ago . . . During our 10-12 years’ stay in Ger­ many, we made a trip to Italy and were in Rome for the first time, and then I found a terrace on the Palatin hill in Rome, which is the foundation of the palace of Septimus Severus. Only the foundation is left. There I thought about a Film, only I didn’t know which one, about the decadence of the Roman Empire. That was not Corneille. That was this space, this activity around it, and these pieces of rubble, and that light, and this rec­ tangular, barren space . . . I repressed my terrace, and thought about it now and then and then hit on Corneille, and by chance on Othon and discovered that Corneille — using a subject by Tacitus — had treated my terrace theme, so to speak, but in his way, of course,

and using the approach of Tacitus. And we made a film, using the approach of Tacitus, using the approach of Corneille. We added little, but dragged it into the present and planted it in this space.”

History Lessons (1972) 16 mm Eastmancolor 7254; Eclair-Coutant; 85 min. Cost approx. $26,000. Based on the novel Die Geschäfte des Hern Julius Caesar by Bertolt Brecht. “ In this I tried a third way to speak about history. The film has two main levels. One is presented, without analysis, repeated three times, but each time is different (a tracking over-the-shoulder shot past the driver of a small car through the streets of old Rome).

The first time is morning, the second time, high noon, and the third time, evening. These are the neighbourhoods where the ancient Romans slew their slaves and the first Christians. Now it is where the artisans live.

How they work is not shown, only suggested, through the noises. Cinema is an instrument, not to show things, but to suggest things.

Each repetition changes the other versions of the sequence. It is also about perception. How your perception changes, over a long sustain­ ed shot. With noises, forms and colours moving. And enormous variety. The second level is analytical (the political discussions, from the novel). You see four characters — three belong to the same class, and the fourth (the banker) to the opposite class. They are ghosts who knew Caesar.”

The film is extremely abstracted and static. (“We took so much away we had to leave something — the colour”) There is the growing nausea that you feel for the banker’s logic and rationale of history, and there is also the extreme beauty of the luminous rhododendrons in the

background of the shot. The street sequences are hard to judge — are they too long? It becomes impossible to say, they could logically be any ar­ bitrary length, such is the ‘logic’ of streets, and of journeys.

Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accom­ paniment to a Cinematographic Scene (1972) 16 mm Gevaert reversal and Eastmancolor 7254; Eclair-Coutant and Eclair 60; 15 min.

Commissioned for television, in a program in which three filmmakers were invited to present footage to accompany the Schoenberg piece.

The soundtrack included two letters by Schoenberg, a text by Brecht, and the music; the visual track included footage of the Straubs’ friends, themselves, their flat, and even their cat — and newsreel footage of the assembly of bombs for use in Vietnam. Editing the newsreel footage took three days.

“That was an ordeal; tiny bits from many thousands of metres of material. We wanted to show it precisely, the hands of the people who assemble the bombs, as few faces as possible, and reduced to precise gestures.

That was an ordeal because that is what it is.

It was a nightmare.”

Moses and Aaron (1975) 35 mm Eastmancolor 5254; Mitchell 300 Blimp; 105 min. Based with extraordinary fideli­ ty on the opera Moses and Aaron by Arnold Schoenberg. See the Gregory Wood/Daniele Huillet notebook mentioned above.

I Cani del Sinai (shooting planned for June, 1976) ' Based on Franco Fortini’s book, I cani del Sinai; to be shot in 16 mm Eastmancolor, in Italian; dealing with the issues of the Arab/Israeli conflict, as reflected in Italian society; running time, approxim ately 40 minutes. ★

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MARCO

Marco Ferreri Continued from P.142

When they say, “the solution — here it is” , nobody, however, wants to apply this solution because economic - political - social in­ terests are at stake. These are the interests of a structure which func­ tions in a certain way, but to the detriment of man, who becomes a victim of the structure.

Some might say that this struc­ ture was created for man, but this can’t be so because it has been created to repress man. It’s a struc­ ture that exploits him.

This is a police catchcry — point to a solution. The solution has to be looked for, but not by endeavouring to bring about reforms. When you look for a solution you need certain forces which arise only if there is a revolution. The word revolution, a word which is always a disturbing one, is useful because it implies a complete turning upside down. A revolution of the system is necessary. Therefore, it’s not possi­ ble for me to have the solution. I say it is necessary to accustom man Can we speak of a continuation of to solitude, to living not only with the theme you began in “La Grande one father or one mother, but to liv­ Bouffe”? Solitude, relationship with ing with fathers, with mothers, with death . . . men. To accustom man to solitude, to accustom him to the idea of Grande Bouffe was a typically death, to accustom him, that is, to masculine film, but here, with all those things he is not accustom­ L‘Ultima Donna, we return to the ed to. man-woman relationship. And I Marco Bellocchio Continued from P.142

Exactly. Ideologically speaking, that's what I wanted to achieve, even while using a structure not much different from that of most of the other films. I would say-that it's similar to the structure of La Cina e Vicina and I Pugni in Tasca in that it has a structure which remains reasonably stable and traditional in its way of narration. On the other hand, the film Nel Nome del Padre had a more open structure and a probably more original one with its intentional, expressionist elements.

Do these traditional narrative forms correspond to a precise choice, or are they simply one of your ways of recounting things in general?

Well, until now, until this film. I don’t know what will happen in the future — this type of structure has been the one that suits me best of those that come more naturally to me. That is, to tell the story ac­ cording to the plan of the novel, leaving reality only every now and then, never re-arranging it — as Carmelo Bene, for example, did. It has been my way of expressing myself up to now, to use a structure which is pretty closed, always, however, trying to remain true to the reality ahead. No longer was it an attitude of anger that I express­ ed in I Pugni in Tasca, an anger that had accumulated during the course of my life till then, but cer­ tainly I was putting forward, as far as possible, radical ideas about reality in general.

But here we come across the problem of how to produce the film, because this film has obvious­ ly had a history of those com­ promises which occur in the film in­ dustry all the time. I mean, the choice of actors was a clearly dic­ tated choice, not an ideal choice, but one dependent on the usual commercial exigencies of the market. Nothing very sensational, but that’s how it was. We directors

think the argument is a reasonably conclusive one, because a new ele­ ment has been introduced — the child who acts as a catalyst for much of the situation.

Exactly. Speaking of the crisis of the couple, how do you see the relationship with the child?

It’s the child who causes the protagonist’s need for a relation­ ship that’s maternal, rather than paternal, to come to the fore­ ground. That is, a relationship more physical than intellectual.

And does he succeed in this?

Yes, he does, because the relationship changes. The man seeks a m aternal relationship because a paternal relationship d o e s n 't ex ist; i t ’s ra th e r a

are always dependent on our previous films; my future work will obviously depend on the commer­ cial results of this film, not only on its artistic success.

And then, once you become part of the mechanism of expensive and spectacular productions, it’s dif­ ficult to escape — look, for ex­ ample, at Bertolucci . . .

If you look a little at the history of Italian cinema you will see that many of those who contributed to a renewal, who at th'e beginning made socially committed films, have now

FERRERI

relationship based on power inside the nuclear family unit. Instead, the mother’s relationship is a more emotional one; and the man also seeks such a relationship with his son, because he is trying to rediscover himself. But because he has been formed according to cer­ tain ideas he is going to have to look for his ideal woman all his life.

And she’ll never suit him because his ideal woman is a mother, the madonna, for him as for us all — that is, an idea of a woman who no longer corresponds to reality. The man eventually cuts off his prick, not because he doesn’t know how to screw any more, but because he wants to take on a different physiognomy; not of man-prick, but of a different personality. He cuts off his prick because he finally wants to be a man and not a phallus. ★

to think of the right actors, to es­ tablish certain relationships and to avoid arriving in front of a producer with a script but without any terms of reference. Ferreri has an extraordinary capacity in this, and it is this which has enabled him to always make good (even if un­ successful) films.

If you could make a film without having to take these factors into ac­ count, what type of cinema would you choose?

1 think I would always make films based on fiction, but I feel the need to make films I’d term domestic; films in which men count; films which have to do with life to­ day and with today’s problems.

Films on a grand scale, the type of film which is always more expen­ sive and on a grander scale than any before—these are the types of film which attract me least, though they could tempt me on the level of pure adventure. For example, to make a film about the life of Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who went to China, and all its implications — the Spanish war, his experiences as a doctor, the Long March, etc. You could make a very good film of it if you wanted to make one of the type of The Bridge on the River Kwai — a type which will keep its place in the history of the cinema and be seen by millions of film-goers. But deepdown 1 feel really drawn to something more intimate, done on a smaller scale, something less talk­ ed about. I am more interested in finding out what people are like in­ side than in looking at them in great masses, seen against enor­ mous sets and filmed by masses of equipment.

BELLOCCHIO/MARCO

Marco Bellocchio on the set of Victory March

retired into an individual sphere, or made purely aesthetic films — Fellini, Visconti and De Sica are the most outstanding examples.

Well, De Sica at a certain point broke away from his original rigorous, stylistic line and became a great professional who passed from one subject to another quite easily.

Visconti, yes, he became even more arid, making films more and more aesthetically splendid, but in­ creasingly tied to a preoccupation with death. But in contrast to De Sica and Visconti, Antonioni, for example, is one who at least has tried to move with the times. I must say that he has tried to see the im­ plications of certain events. For ex­ ample, the revolution of 1960s affected him much more than it did De Sica, Visconti or Fellini.

I don’t know Visconti, but it seems to me that in his attitude to young people he is very distant, if not disdainful. Anyhow, he doesn’t concern himself with what is happening, and when he tried to do so in his latest film, Conversation Piece, he appeared ridiculous, just as Fellini did — the young people of Roma, for example, are comical, unreal.

Then there is a whole group of Italian directors who are socially concerned, such as Rosi, who is a great stylist and a great director.

Ferreri, also, is a great director. He has an extraordinary ability for editing films, and is clever enough

The young directors who in the sixties become known as innovators in the Italian cinema are today more or less part of the industry. Who are their successors? What are they doing?

But the thing that worries me is that the young directors, and I could cite dozens of them, treat the most fascist of themes, and treat them lightly at that. Films of sex, violence, films about the police, about a pornography which isn’t even liberating because it’s always a very contained and catholic one.

And this is the truth, there are peo­ ple who will do anything. I am speaking here of a large group of those who will make the films of tomorrow.

In) contrast to the 1960s, the producers today seem less disposed towards ideas which are courageous, experimental or adventurous. A cer­ tain levelling out has occurred and this perhaps derives from the confor­ mity of these neo-directors you are speaking of . . .

Yes, certainly. The situation is tending towards a concentration and a levelling. You have to realize that we became part of a definite period around the year 1968. Now we are almost ready to consider 1968 as part of our history, and there is already someone who is thinking, and not without reason, of making a film about 1968, just as once people thought about making a film of the Resistance. It is already a historical, I won’t say mythical, fact. Now, as never before, we are realizing that things are changing. ★ Cinema Papers, September— 187

PHILIPPE MORA

Philippe Mora

Continued from P.114 It is also said of “Mad Dog” that it is the first Australian homosexual film. Is that a fair construction?

What is a homosexual film?

Daniel Morgan does not ride around the bush seducing beautiful women in every town that he rides into. But the reason for that hasn’t anything to do with homosexuality.

The reason is quite simply that he didn’t do that.

But there are a lot of people who, by the way, believe that most of the bushrangers were homosexual.

There were no women, only sheep, in the bush. But that’s not impor­ tant to the theme of the film.

Look, Morgan could have been a homosexual. Equally, he might not have been. No one knows exactly.

Let me put it this way: it’s certainly not a searing question in the direc­ tor’s mind.

How much effect does what the critics write about your films have on you?

Well, there is nothing more con­ structive, and nothing more helpful to any creative person than a good review which reveals that the reviewer understood aspects of the film.

But what about adverse criticism?

It’s odd that the last thing I ex­ pected was to have Mad Dog criticized for violence. Just in the same way, the last thing I expected was to have Swastika criticized on the grounds of it being supposedly anti-semitic. 1just wasn’t expecting that.

Like all reasonable human beings, or so 1 thought, I assumed that everyone accepted that Hitler was a terrible thing for humanity; therefore any film that was made about Hitler was a comment on how terrible an effect on humanity Hitler was. Swastika was a com­ ment on that.

Isn’t that somewhat naive?

No, I don’t think so. I think I am just coming up against obsolete at­ titudes in society which in five or 10 years will be irrelevant. It’ll be like a quirk: “Isn’t it funny that, when Swastika was released, people thought it was anti-semitic?” I mean that’s already the case.

When you see one of your films with a large audience, how do you respond to audience reactions?

I hate it. But on the other hand, I have already cut myself off from the film emotionally. I do that when we get to answer print stage, otherwise it would become un­ bearable to put yourselfthrough all those creative tensions again and again.

I find that audience reaction is a very unsafe thing to go by. I don’t 188—Cinema Papers, September

like sitting with an audience and w atching one of my film s.

Audiences are always different. It’s very dangerous to make any deci­ sion on cutting, or anything like that, on how an audience responds, because another audience will react in an entirely different way.

But to be honest, I am the wrong person to ask because I can’t bear looking at any of my films after I have finished them. There is nothing about any of the films I have made that I’m satisfied with; that’s why it’s torture for me to sit through one of my films with an audience. Because when a film is completed, that was the way I felt about it at such and such a time.

And two weeks later I might feel very differently. A very important creative decision is when to stop.

But there is another factor of f i l m m a k i n g t h a t ’s of t e n overlooked, and that’s the effect of exhibition on a film. I went to see Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? at the Village, Double Bay, and the sound was virtually inaudible. So, I complained to the usherette and she said to me: “The sound is low because it’s an old film” . And when I explained that I had been involved in the making of the film, she said I should speak to the manager. So I complained to the manager about the sound level, and he said, “ It’s an old film” . Anyway, they even­ tually turned it up, but filmmakers do lose control of their films once they get into distribution. Kubrick, for example, gave one projectionist a pair of expensive binoculars to check the grain so that his film -would be in focus. But he is a sort of shop steward for film directors as far as exhibition standards go.

But it’s heartbreaking to work for a year or two years or three years on a film, striving to get it perfect and pushing everybody to get it right to the extent of being a pain in the arse, and then you put it in a cinema and it’s out of focus.

Did you have much trouble finding distribution?

It’s real! People don’t go leaping on to women at every opportunity.” Mad Dog Morgan

I haven’t had good distribution for my films. Internationally, I’ve had, for the type of films that they were, very good distribution. It irks me considerably that Swastika took four years to get a release in Australia. But overseas, it’s a different story. For example, Brother, Can you Spare a Dime? has recently been shown on Yugoslavian television. Now, as far as I am concerned, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? on Yugoslavvian television is almost a pop art concept. Apparently it was a rage success because of the King Kong sequences — they hadn’t seen King Kong!

What kind of shooting ratio did you get on “Mad Dog”?

I rarely went beyond three takes unless it was a mechanical fault, and I usually ended up using take one because I was after that spon­ taneous . . . that little spark of chance that you get a lot of the time in take one. Everyone is trying.

You know, some of the greatest moments in film have been the chance moments, when all the chemistries of all the elements have come together and ignited.

In the film, you didn’t have many set pieces. There seems to be an emphasis on close-ups and two-shots

No. Would that be because BEF had some success with a couple of other Australian-made films which made them more receptive?

Not just BEF, but any distributor works basically on figures. An idealistic distributor is not going to live long in the field. And they don’t operate on the artistic merit of a film. They operate on how much the film is making, or capable of making. They are the facts of film distribution.

Until “Mad Dog”, none of your films received wide distribution in Australia outside of film festivals or limited runs. If “Mad Dog” hadn’t happened, would “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” have got a season?

Or “Swastika”?

As far as Australia is concerned,

There were 150 people in those opening shots. But it’s true that the bulk of the film concentrates on a small number of people at once.

But as far as crowds go, I must say I love crowds and I wish we could have afforded more of them in Mad Dog. I should say it is, to me, a com­ pliment that you got the impression that the film concentrated on in­ dividuals. But I wouldn’t have been daunted at the prospect of controll­ ing crowd scenes, if that’s what you meant. Budgetary limitations played a strong role in that side of the filming.

Because of the old woman who was laughing, which I saw as the key element. And for a start, I love the idea of the hero being con­ fronted with a woman who offers herself and who is rejected by him, which is the opposite of what you see in just about every film. I think that’s real. People just don’t go leaping on to women at every op­ portunity.

Nor did women in the nineteenth century bare their breasts to itinerant gunmen, surely . . .

There were groupies in the last century. And don’t forget that Morgan was very, very famous.

And fame affected people in very strange ways then, just as it does now. And to be featured in news­ papers would have had more effect generally than it even does now.

That’s one of the reasons why there were all those stories of women be­ ing raped by Morgan; they were all later denied and all turned out to be nonsense. But the idea for that scene came from reading reports of women who claimed that they had been raped by Morgan and then later retracted it. They said things like, “ In fact, he was incredibly polite, and helped me through the night and cooked me dinner” , and so forth.

That scene is a comment on fame and how embarrassed he was, because he says, “I’m just a tired stranger”, and she says, “You’re no stranger, you’re Daniel Morgan.”

And he replies, “You know my name.” Ana as soon as he says that, he turns off, no matter what she’s doing.

What’s next?

We’re going to do For The Term Of His Natural Life, but before that

I’m going to America to help organize the U.S. launch of Mad Dog. The film is scheduled to open in five of the biggest cinemas in Loew’s circuit in New York City, followed by a wider launch a week later in 40 hardtops throughout The one sequence that seemed New York S ta te . S h ortly false was where Morgan went into thereafter, Mad Dog Morgan will the pub and the girl bared her go into 120 cinemas throughout the breasts. How could you justify that state before getting a blanket bit of business? It appears so con­ release across the country at Christ­ mas. ★ trived . . .

211 5151

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JOHN HEYER

John Heyer

Continued from P.122 What was the origin of your famous “Back of Beyond”?

Back of Beyond grew out of a brief from Shell’s public relations manager. They wanted to associate Shell with Australia and to do that they thought: “ Let’s make a film that is very Australian, one which would demonstrate by the fact of making it, ‘we’re with you’.” Not s omet hi ng s uper i mpos ed on Australia, but as if it were with you and seeing your virtues and your w eaknesses. They hoped the Australianism would rub off on to the company’s image.

What were your initial ideas for doing that? You once said you started at the coast and worked in­ land . . .

I frankly can’t remember. I know it was a jolly hard thing to find.

They gave me a budget of £9000 and said I could use any subject I liked and could do well for that amount of money. In the end we chose the mail run on the Birdsville Track as the subject, and the film was an outstanding success.

I have noticed that your documen­ taries are very carefully structured, almost in the manner of fictional films. Can you explain your approach to documentary?

The fundamental thing is the ob­ ject of making it. Are you making it to amuse people, or inform them, or to persuade them?—that is the key thing. In Back of Beyond, it was to portray and associate with, the Australian character. In Barrier Reef, the film I am working on at, the moment, I was asked to make a film which will persuade or in­ fluence people to view the Barrier Reef as a good thing, a thing they will get a lot of fun out of it they are sensible about it. Well, the problem is, of course, to achieve that. In my view no holds are barred — as long as I don’t show the reef as something it is not. So long as I use anything that is true about the reef then I will use any method of doing it: re-enactment, drama, history, science — they are your tools.

It is crucial to me that I know the subject completely. I slowly make up long lists of categories and items which seem to have potential. I put down everything — weather, life cycles, and so on; as well as the places and ideas I think of that seem to be fertile. Then I try and relate these together.

Do you change the script while shooting?

Oh yes. You must be opportune, but your basic idea is the same. I make the film in my mind, shot for shot before I start. By scripting a practicable basis, you save a lot of money and give yourself more time to be fluid. I always know that if 190—Cinema Papers, September

anything goes wrong, I can shoot what I have written down and it will be all right. Also, you need something more tangible than what is in your mind so as to com­ municate with, for instance, the cameraman.

Drafts are good because they make you stop waffling and become definite. Once you have the first draft you can make the film. But in my view the film is never finished; there just comes a logical time when you stop. You know it when you get there — and you know it when you don’t.

Back of Beyond took three weeks to make: one year thinking about it and planning, one year in produc­ tion and one year to finish it. Of that three years only six weeks were on locating shooting. That’s the hard, mechanical side. I don’t think we needed more time than that.

What you need a lot of time for is to get to know your subject before you start.

Do you use a scripwriter, or do you usually write the script your­ self?

If I am making the film myself, such as Barrier Reef, I use what I loosely, call an associate to help with the research, which is a colossal job, and, more impor­ tantly, to be creative critic and creative contributor — someone to brush against. Michael Noonan worked with me on The Reef and he was first class. If The Reef is any good it will owe a lot to Michael’s contribution. With a thing like the reef, where i gnorance is so tremendous, it is doubly difficult for the layman. There is no one person you can ask about anything.

You have to go to all kinds of peo­ ple for little bits and pieces and put it together yourself. I don’t think there is such a thing as writing a film — it is a crazy anomaly.

It is a matter of just organizing your ideas in note form on paper . . .

To make them practical and as an aid for yourself in finding a design. The more you can see that design, the earlier you see it, the better. I hang mine around the room — with toilet paper and bits of string — and mark it out. In the case of the reef, I thought of the form first in terms of a piano con­ certo. The piano has the liquid quality of water and the reef itself is an enormous solid wall, 1930 km (1200 miles) long, hence a full symphony orchestra, the biggest you can lay your hands on, and you start there. I wrote a brief very ear­ ly for the chappie who was going to write the music. I was going to get Pat Alton to do it. The problem with writing the music early is that you have nothing to show the com­ poser. I can talk his head off if he will sit there and stay awake long enough, and try and convey what’s in my mind. Then I did something that John Kay taught me: I started listening to every concerto I could find, hoping to find one that would

have something of what I was seek­ and regarded as a purely documen­ ing in order to better communicate tary filmmaker? with the composer.

Australians tend to put people in boxes — it’s much easier. The con­ Which was . . . cept of a person as a “ filmmaker” Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. is quite foreign to the average per­ 5 not only communicated the idea son. One of the reasons I took the —• it was the idea! A fantastic job with Shell in Britain was that moment. Fortunately, the ABC had directors were left to carry out their a contract with a leading British brief without interference — you pianist and agreed to make it were not this or that kind of film­ maker — just a good filmmaker. available.

There was nothing like the kind of Is that something consistent in involvement you get here with your films, that you start with a sponsored and commercial films.

They want to know what you are musical idea? going to do and how you are going Only inasmuch as I tend to to do it.

One thing we were always look­ create everything first in a total form — with little regard for detail ing for at Shell was talent. There is — and that form applies just as a great shortage of it. And a great much to music as it does to film or help to picking talent is to work poetry. A film has to have a form. I with them. This is the reason I’ve mean where Picnic loses out to my been very critical of the system of mind, for example, is its lack of assessments here with the Develop­ form, and that leads you into the ment Corporation, etc. Films are unnecessary ending. Take away the judged on scripts. This is just not last reel and you’ve got yourself a on. How can a non-writer describe picture. Sunday Too Far Away — on paper to a non-filmmaker what what was the car doing there in the he is going to do? I submitted a beginning? And at the end — you treatment I had written based on can’t escape from your basic Capricornia to the old Film formlessness by sticking a title up, Development Corporation. One it’s not on. If you haven’t a total assessment said: “ Fantastic, this is form, you’ve had it and unless you a must, no government can afford are Columbia or someone and own to miss out.” Another assessment the screen, you can’t bolster your was uncertain and non-committal. ending with an angelic chorus swell­ The third said: “This is ridiculous, how could a film be made out of ing over the sunset.

On Barrier Reef I wanted the last such a bad novel.”

There is only one way to discover reel of nine minutes to be an im­ pression of the reef for man if he the likely merit of a project, and uses common sense. We start the that is to do your homework on the reel with the final movement of the person. If you are going to commis­ Beet hoven Concerto.

A sion a painting or a piece of music, recapitulation, a re-statement on you find out what they have done. the theme. Suddenly the music Talk to the person and find out changes. There is a whole new their views. Imagine me asking melody coming in on top so the im­ Drysdale if I could buy a painting, ages fall naturally of people who and first requiring him to write are living on the reef and finding in­ down a description for me of what spiration in their work from the he is going to paint.

The point about C a p r ic o r n ia is colours, the beauty and just being there. that it is material. The quality of I might change the image the novel has got nothing to do with progression, or a sequence might be it. I found it great material. It gave better than I thought, or the me the instruments to play on — balance in the film may have the light and shade and colour. altered by the material having un­ expected weight or significance.

In terms of international awards, You can never be fixed. Let it jell you would be Australia’s most itself. Don’t force it. successful filmmaker. While this Take the scientific aspect of food does not seem to have helped with from the reef, or adventure oh the your “Capricornia” project, it must reef. When I start putting them have been personally rewarding over together, their relationships change the years to receive such constant and I may want to alter their posi­ critical acclaim . . . tion or weight in the film. The benefit of using a composer like Oh yes, certainly. It has helped John Kay, or Tristram Carey, is my morale a lot, too. The good that they maximize the music ac­ thing about festivals, particularly cordingly. But Beethoven is dead. Venice, is that they attract a lot of So you must think a bit harder. great filmmakers. It is a most There is no question of taking stimulating experience to sit and minutes out of Beethoven. Not watch your film with Carl Dreyer because it’s Beethoven, bpt because on one side, and Bert Haanstra on it’s the form of the music. the other. The way they react is very stimulating and gives you a lot This method of construction, and of confidence; one ofJhe most dif­ your sympathetic treatment of ficult things is confidence. I find characters, gives your films an most good filmmakers in their almost fictional quality. Do you hearts lack confidence. Perhaps think you have been placed in a box, that is why they are good. * *

THE QUARTER

Virgin Flesh A Fistful of Dollars (b)

The Quarter Continued from P.105

(b) Reconstructed version classified “ Not suitable for Children” with eliminations in September 1967.

(a) Previously classified 'R' in Film Censorship Bulletin No. 11/72 " (b) Reconstructed version classied "Not Suitable for Children" with eliminations in August 1967. (c) Previously classified “ R” in Film Censorship Bulletin Nos 5/74 and 7/74.

For Restricted Exhibition (R) Abduction Across 110th Street (a) The Antichrist Below The Belt Framed (Reconstructed version) Girls For Rent Hot Girls For Men Only (Reconstructed version) The House of Exorcism House of Mortal Sin The Miss Layed Genii (Reconstructed version) Mitchell Piranha Secrets of a Super Stud Sex Express (Reconstructed version) The Toy Box Wild, Free and Hungry (f) To The Devil A Daughter

(a) S ubm itted fo r possible re cla ssifica tio n .

Previously listed in Film Censorship Bulletin No. 3/73 (f) S ubm itted fo r possible re cla ssificatio n .

Previously listed in Film Censorship Bulletin No. 6/73.

F IL M S R E G IS T E R E D ELIMINATIONS Nil

W IT H

'

FILMS REGISTERED WITH ELIMINA­ TIONS

101 Acts of Love

Reason: Indecency

Savage Man, Savage Beast

Decision Reviewed: Appeal against rejection by the Film Censorship Board Decision of the Review Board: Uphold the decision of the Film Censorship Board.

Self Service Girls

Decision Reviewed: Appeal against rejection by the Film Censorship Board Decision of the Review Board: Uphold the decision of the Film Censorship Board.

FILM

CENSORSHIP, 1976

APRIL

(Reprinted from Australian Government Gazette No G22, June 1, 1976.)

FILM S REG ISTER ED ELIMINATIONS

W ITH O U T

For General Exhibition (G) Caterina Sforza la Leonessa di Romagna W hite Horizons (16mm) Mustang Country Guddi Little Orbit the Astrodog and the Screechers from Outer Space Parsizlar Piya Ka Ghar

Not Recommended for Children (NRC) The Adventurous Air Steward Enas Nomotagis Politis (A Lawful Civilian) The M cCulloch* Tara Poki Echoes of a Summer The Girl Who Couldn’t Say No From Noon Till Three Vado in Guerra a Far Quattrine

For Mature Audiences (M) Busting (a) Confessions of a Bigamist Don’t Call M e Uncle Flic Story Hassaboulia Lucky Luciano Persecution Tarkan (16mm) W. C. Fields and Me All the President’s Men The Battle of Manchuria The Chinese Dragon The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox Grizzly Husband Italian Style (II Gatto Mam more) Skyriders The Winner Takes All The Zebra Killer (a) Previously classified “R” in Film Censorship Bulletin No. 1/74.

For Restricted Exhibition (R) B ib i — C o n f e s s io n s o f (Reconstructed version) Deadly Fists Kung Fu The First Nudie Musical Hostess in Heat Linda Lovelace for President Pets (16mm) Sex Crazy Em m anuelle L’Antivierge The Big Family Enter the Seven Virgins Teenage Pick-Up Fertility Bank Sex in the Snow Three Into Sex Won’t Go

Sw eet

S ix te e n

Reason: Excessive violence The World’s Last Sex Act

And Now Prepare Your Grave

Restricted Exhibition (R)

Eliminations: 21.6 metres (47 secs) Reason: Excessive violence Eliminations: 232.90 metres (8 mins 29 secs) Reason: Indecency

Reason: Indecency The Young Secretaries

Reason: Indecency

FILMS BOARD OF REVIEW

Freedom to Love

Fongaluli

Eliminations: 108.20 m (3 mins 57 secs) Reason: Indecency

Girls in the Streets (Reconstructed version)

FILMS REFUSED REGISTRATION

Eliminations: 4.9 metres (10 secs) Reason: Indecency

The Dirty Mind of Young Sally (16mm)

FILMS REFUSED REGISTRATION

Thigh High in Sex

FILMS APPROVED FOR REGISTRA­ TION AFTER REVIEW The Man Who Fell to Earth (3881.00 m)

Decision Reviewed: Appeal against “ R" registration by the Film Censorship Board Decision of the Board: Uphold the decision of the Film Censorship Board

Reason: Indecency Reason: Indecency

Butterflies

Reason: Indecency

FILMS BOARD OF REVIEW

FILMS BOARD OF REVIEW FILMS NOT APPROVED FOR REG­ ISTRATION AFTER REVIEW Savage Man, Savage Beast

Decision Film Decision Film

reviewed: Appeal against rejection by the Censorship Board. of the Board: Uphold the decision of the Censorship Board.

Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Reconstructed version) Decision reviewed: Appeal against rejection by the Film Censorship Board.

Decision of the Board: Uphold the decision of the Film Censorship Board.

Decision Film Decision Film

reviewed: Appeal against rejection by the Censorship Board. of the Board: Uphold the decision of the Censorship Board.

Reason: Indecency

FILMS NOT APPROVED FOR REGIS­ TRATION AFTER REVIEW

Reason: lndecencv The Street Fighter

For Restricted Exhibition (R)

Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom

FILMS BOARD OF REVIEW

FILMS REFUSED REGISTRATION The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann

FILMS REGISTERED WITH ELIM­ INATIONS

Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom

FILMS REFUSED REGISTRATION

Porcelaine Anni Ersary Seven Beauties Sex is a Pleasure Teach Me Trip with the Teacher White Angels, Black Angels (16mm)

FILM

CENSORSHIP, 1976

MAY

(Reprinted from Australian Government Gazette No. G29, July 20, 1976.)

FILMS REGISTERED WITHOUT ELIMINATIONS For General Exhibition (G) Aap Ki Kasam Avalanche The Happy Tree (16mm) It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet It’s Showtime Kategida (The Storm) Mia Ntanta Kai Tezaoli (The Baby Sitter is Over­ tired) 0 Fantasmenos (The Man of Fantasies) Prem Nagar Raga Return of the Big Cat Robin Hood Junior The Slipper and the Rose Smirnia Tomboy and the Champ Vacanze Alla Baia de Argento From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler

FILMS APPROVED FOR REGISTRA­ TION AFTER REVIEW

Autobiography of a Princess (16mm) Baba (Father) Baby Blue Marine The Bad News Bears The Bullet Train C adaveri Eccellenti (H ono rable C adavers/T h e Context) Confidential Report Family Plot The Fourth Wish Furious Dragon La Vendetta Dell Uomo Invisible Monsieur Verdoux Soual Fi El Hob (16mm) Trial by Combat Illuminations (16mm).

For Mature Audiences (M) Ciao, Federico! (16mm) Death Challenge Embryo Enjoy Longevity — 300 Years The Evil Trap Gator Guns Across the Veldt Hero of Kwantong Hot Holidays 1 Will, I Will . . . For Now The Likely Lads Loveable M r Able The Missouri Breaks Ode to Billy Joe Rebel Rousers (2107.00 m) Rebel Rousers (2057.00 m) Road Movie (a) Stay Hungry Touch of EvH (16mm) The Trespassers

FILMS NOT APPROVED FOR REGIS­ TRATION AFTER REVIEW Nil

FILM

CENSORSHIP, JUNE 1976

(Reprinted from Australian Government Gazette No G31, August 3, 1976.)

FILM S REGISTERED ELIMINATIONS

W ITH O U T

For General Exhibition (G) Canzoni A Tempo De Twist Canzoni Bulle E Pupe College (16mm) The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser Gran Varieta Lo Scopone Scientific© The Loves of Liszt Murder in the Red Barn (16mm) Mysteries From Beyond Earth No Deposit No Return Ridere Ridere Ridere Sally of the Sawdust (16mm) 7 Meres Psemata (7 Days of Lies) This is Skiing Yessongs

Not Recommended for Children (NRC) African Express Airport ’75 (Italian version) Blackie the Pirate Death Driver Diamonds Dolofoniste Ton Makario Doomwatch Drive In Erotas Ke Prodosia (Love and Betrayed) Hay Que Romper La Rutina La Stangata L’Ultimo Samurai Pane E Cicoccolata Tears of Happiness

FILM S REGISTERED ELIMINATIONS

POSTSCRIPTUM

W ITH O U T

Face to Face Family Life (a) The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday II Padrino Part 11 It Could Happen to You The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Oz Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others (Sub Titled

Version) Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others (English

dubbed version) _ A Whole Life Time (Reduced English version) The Man Who Fell to Earth (Reconstructed version) (3542.50 m) (c) Psihi and Sarka

(a) Previously classified “ R” in Film Censorship Bulletin No. 5/76.

For Restricted Exhibition (R) The Boob Tube Chopping Block (16mm) Country Cuzzins (Reconstructed Version) Is There Sex After Death (Reduced Version)

(2422.00) (b) The Last Hard Man Love and Marriage The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea Street of Joy Vigilante Force

(b) Reduced by importer's cuts from 2800.00 m (Film Censorship Board No. 6/75).

FILM S R EG ISTERED IMINATIONS For General Exhibition (G)

For Restricted Exhibition (R)

King of Kings (16mm) (a)

Eliminations: 2.8 m (15 secs) Reason: Excessive violence. (a) Previously registered "G" totalling 25.76 m in 1961.

W ITH

EL­

The winners at the 1976 Australian Film Awards were: Best Film: The Devil’s Playground.

Best Actor: Simon Burke; Nick Tate (both for Devil’s Playground) Best Actress: Helen Morse (Caddie) Best Supporting Actor: Drew Forsythe

(Caddie) Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Jaffer; Jacki Weaver (both for Caddie) Best Direction: Fred Schepisi (Devil’s

Playground) Best Screenplay: Fred Schepisi (De­

vil’s Playground)

'

Best Cinematography: Ian Baker (De­

vil’s Playground) Best Editing: Edward McQueen-Mason (End Play) Best Foreign Film: Nashville Jury Prize: Devil’s Playground Documentary Category: Bronze Award: Lalai-Dreamtime Honourable Mention: Larwari and

Walkara Special Award for M acro ph o ­ tography: Aliens Amongst Us Short Fiction Category: Bronze Award: Queensland Honourable Mention: Last Drive-in

Movie Advertising Category: Bronze Award: Action Lotion Honourable Mentions: Shell Cou­

sin Charlie; Pub With No Beer

with

eliminations

For Restricted Exhibition (R) Pink Flamingoes (Reconstructed Version)

Eliminations: 8.7 m (19 secs) Reason: Indecency

The passage of one film, The Man Who Fell To Earth, through censorship is of particular interest as it is an exam­ ple of how distributors will cut a film in an attempt to get it re-classified. This, the latest film of Nicolas Roeg (who also directed Don’t Look Now, Walkabout, and co-directed Performance) was originally 3881.00 m in length. In May, 1976, it was submitted for classification at a length of 3783.90 m, the distributor having cut 97.10m (3 mins 32 secs) from it before submission to the cen­ sor. This new version was rated “ R” .

The distributor appealed the classifica­ tion to the Board of Review in June, but the appeal was rejected. Suprisingly, the print sent up for appeal was 3881 m and not the 3783.90m originally sub­ mitted (and classified “ R” ).

Determined only to accept an “ M” , no doubt in the hope that the film would attract the young David Bowie fans, the film was dra stica lly shortened to 3542.50. This new version was sub­ mitted in June and rated “ M” . Conse­ quently, the film audiences in Australia will see is 338.50m — an incredible 12 mins 12 secs — shorter than the film Roeg made.

OZ AWARDS

For Mature Audiences (M)

(a) Previously classified “ R" in Film Censorship Bulletin No. 7/74.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (3783.90 m) Acapulco Gold (16mm) .

Adam and Nicole Bald Headed Betty Behind Locked Doors Black Emmanuelle Inside Amy Lipstick I Spilia Tis Idonis (Cave of Love)

Nil

Nil

(16mm)

Not Recommended for Children (NRC)

F I L M S N O T A P P R O V E D FOR REGISTRATION AFTER REVIEW

Jedda Award: The Birders Awards for the Two Most Creative En­ trie s : Bert Deling (Pure S); Gary Patterson (How Willingly You

Sing) Silver Medallion for Photograph: Tom Cowan (Pure S) Raymond Longford Award: Ken G. Hall.

Cinema Papers, September— 191

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ELLIOTT KASTNER presents MARLON “BRANDO aJACK NICHOLSON mAnARTHUR PENNFilm"THE MISSOURI BREAKS” DirectedbyARTHUR PENN reducedbyELLIOTT KASTNER andROBERTM. SH E R M A N ■ MusicbyJOHN WILLIAMS Production Service] by DEVON/Persky-TSright AROBERTM. SHERMAN-Production United Artists HI

P lu s ! The exciting 1812 OVERTURE by Combined Military Bands from Duntroon and Victoria Barracks with The Sydney Symphony Orchestra Strings in “ T H E G R E E N M A C H IN E ”

A Transamerica Company

For National Release in August.

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