Cinema Papers no. 66 November 1987 (2025)

OCR

/Z1/.49/‘I/J
No 66 ..

Editor
Philippa Hawker
Publisher
Patr[...]eet. Sydney. NSW 2000.

Signed articles represent the views of their
author. and not necessarily those of the
editor. While every care is taken with
manuscripts and materials supplied to the
magazine. neither the editor nor the pub-
lishers can accept liability lor any loss or[...]may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the express permission ot the
copyright owner. cinema Pape

rs is
published eve[...]‘

© Copyright MTV Publishing
No 66. November I987

Limited.

‘Recommended price only.

In
I-

I-
Z

‘cover: Madonna. trom Whos That Girl 0[...]ts shitty about

Australian film
8 COLOUR VALUES: The colourisation debate

CINEMA AND CHINA

10 ANN HUI: The woman from Hong Kong
13 XANADU: Film Australia go[...]ured girls

20 JAMES BONDAGE: Pinning down 007
26 THE MALTESE FORD FALCON: Film noir, Melbourne style

VIDEO MATTERS

28 OVERVIEW: To market, to market
31 ON VIEW: The latest video releases
33 CLOSE-UP: The melt movie

34 SUPER 8: \X/hat’s new
36 BLEACH[...]Stories, Caravaggio, Down By Law, Hope And
Glory, The Lzghzhorsemen, Running From The Guns, She’: Gotta Have

It, Summer, The Untouchables

THE WRITE STUFF

50 NOVEL APPROACHES: The question of high fidelity
53 PASOLINI: On the script

54 SCREEN PLOYS: Screenwriters have their say

58
59
62
66
79
80

NEW ZEALAND REPORT: The Navzgazor finds its Way
PUBLICATIONS: Stuffing co[...]RODUCTION SURVEY: Who’s making what
CENSORSHIP: The July and August decisions

BACK PAGE: Nove[...]

FEATURES

- Best film: The Year My Voice Broke

0 Best achievement in direction: John Duigan, The
Year My Voice Broke

0 Best original screenplay: John Duigan, The Year My
Voice Broke

0 Best screenplay adapted fr[...]gh Tide

0 Best supporting actor: Ben Mendelsohn, The Year
My Voice Broke

0 Best supporting actress: Jan Adele, High Tide

- Best costume design: Jennie Tate, The Umbrella Woman

0 Best cinematography: Steve Dobs[...]ero

0 Best editing: David Pulbrook, Ground Zero

I Best original music score: Paul Schutze, The Tale Of
Ruby Rose

0 Best production design: Bria[...]Zero

NON-FEATURES

0 Best documentary: Painting The Town

0 Best short fiction: Feathers

0 Best expe[...]film: Crust

0 Best direction: Christina Wilcox, The Nights Belong
To The Novelist

' Best screenplay: Jeffrey Bruer, Sue C[...]0 Best cinematography: Laurie Mclnnes, Palisade

I Best editing: Nubar Ghazarian, Kick Start

0 Best[...]id Fanshawe, Alasdair Macfarlane,
Gary O’Grady, The Musical Mariner (Part One)

TELEVISION

0 Best te[...]s, A Single Life

0 Best actress: Michele Fawdon, The Fish Are Safe

0 Best miniseries: The Great Bookie Robbery

0 Best direction in a miniseries: Marcus Cole, Mark Joffe,

The Great Bookie Robbery
0 Best original screenplay:[...]ame Fassbinder’s last three films. According to the
biography by Robert Katz and Peter Berling, his l[...]a (1981) preceded Theatre In Trance, and this was the
third film most entrants named. Our winners, who will each receive a Copy
of the Katz/Berling biography, Love Is Colder Than Death[...]We have six copies of David Thomson’s new book on Warren Beatty to
give away, courtesy of Heinemann[...]is intriguing work,
all you have to do is tell us the name of the film in which Beatty appeared
with Jean Seberg. M[...]Australian film company,

DEL, been affected by the
problems plaguing its

parent company in the

US? What has happened
to its distribution and pr[...]is
swept into Australia 13 months
ago to announce the opening
of a major film studio in the
land of Crocodile Dundee,
film industry pundits a[...]rs
—— with extravagant box office
losers like the $50 million
Dune — but he had consider-
able reputation and clout.

Stock market investors
thought the float of his Aus-
tralian film company, De
Laure[...]er-
tainment Group (DEG), had
guaranteed to cover the nega-
tive cost of every film made by
DEL, to distribute the films
through its vast world—wide
network and to split the profits
with the Australian subsidiary.

-This agreement would sub-
stantially minimise the nega-
tive cost risks normally associ-
ated with film production and
provide, for the first time, an
Australian film company
access to ongoing distribution
in the US and other overseas
markets. In return, DEL
would acquire the rights to
distribute DEG’s new produc-
tions an[...]tors that DEL would sur-
vive in a country where .the
small local market meant very
few films returned a profit. As
such, the contracts between

DEL managing director Terry Jackman

DEL and DEG have been
valued on the company’s
books at $20 million.

But today, both the film
industry and stockmarket have
turned on DEL. The initial
confidence that the US-based
DEG was going to power the
Australian industry and sup-
port DEL has turned[...]e flops abounding. After
a $15.5 million loss for the
quarter ending 31 May, DEG
was anticipating another loss
for the August quarter.

De Laurentiis is believed to
be searching for an equity
partner to help him pull DEG
out of the red. So far he is
reported to have had discus-
sions with Disney, 20th
Century Fox and Guber
Peters. The movie mogul has
also brought in two investment
ba[...]lp
manoeuvre his company out of
its difficulties. The operation
has taken on an air of urgency
since it was revealed that
DEG’s financial backers could
require the sale of the com-
pany’s valuable film library by
the end of the year unless it in-
creased its new worth by $20
million by 15 November.

As gloomy reports of the US
operation filter back to Aus-
tralia, DEL shar[...]observers have
become increasingly nervous
about the local company’s
prospects -— even before it h[...]DEL but it is
itself now hanging perilously
over the insolvency cliff. What
would become of DEL if its

The increasingly bleak news
coming from Los Angeles also
fuelled rumours about the
local operation. Delays and
changes which may have other-
wise been accepted as par for
the course in a fickle industry
suddenly became objec[...]tched its

first scheduled production
from End Of The Line to Total
Recall? Why was the construc-
tion of the $10 million studio
in the Gold Coast’s hinterland
running four months behind
the prospectus target? Why
had production of DEL’s[...]EL’s managing director,
Terry Jackman describes the
stories of DEL funding DEG
as “absolute nonsens[...]as gone out of
DEL to its parent company
and that the first film distribu-
tion rights payments have not
been made yet.

“That’s just typical industry
blah blah,” he says vehem-
ently. “One of the reasons that
film industry companies do get
knocked down on the stock
market is because this industry
has the wonderful habit of
doing its very best to tear itself
to pieces.”

The stockmarket has,
indeed, been harsh on DEL.
The 50—cent shares shot to $1
soon after listing as the share
cowboys were swept up in
DEL’s buoyant promises. But
by mid-year, when the extent
of DEG’s problems came to
light, they we[...]es
that want to raise additional

capital through the stock-
market.
Jackman says the invest-

ment industry does not fully
appreciate what DEG is doing.
“The financial markets don’t
understand the kind of lead
times involved and all of that.
A lot of investors took their
profits early on and said ‘We
can always get back into this
business later on’ and they sold
out.”

He concedes that DEG’s
problems in the US have not
enhanced DEL’s stock market
performance. After earlier
assurances that the US
organisation's malaise would
in no way affect[...]one place to go
with your films, which we have
at the moment. We would have
to go to a number of places.”

The prospect of finding
buyers for DEL’s films doesn’t
daunt Jackman. “I’m con-
fident that DEG will come out
of these problems. But if they
didn’t for some reason, I’ve
been selling pictures around
the world for a long, long time
and we will make the sort of
films that would have some
overseas market. I am totally
confident we would be able to
do that[...]stralian extrava-
ganzas — is aimed at assuring
the company can profitably
sell all its films, even w[...]tion.”

Notwithstanding Jackman’s
confidence, the main attrac-
tion of DEL for many was its
“failsafe” agreements with
DEG. With the US company
undertaking to return the full
cost of each production to
DEL, regardless of actual box
office receipts, it was hard to
see how the Australian com-
pany could lose. It is less likel[...]ite such
watertight guarantees.

Jackman says: “I haven’t
even tried to replace them
(DEG) with s[...]ing we were able to
do a deal with somebody based
on offering a cheaper negative
cost than they could[...], we may be able to get
a failsafe situation. But I can’t
really answer that question
until I know where DEG is
going.”

DEG’s problems are affect-
ing DEL in another way too.
DEL aims to earn the lion’s
share of its profits from distri-
bution[...]from
other producers). Its pro-
spectus targeted the release of
22 films prior to 31 December
1987, 18[...]o earn

DEL $13.5 million in its first
10 months. The DEL pro-
spectus itself states that profit
forecasts “are particularly
sensitive to the number and the
quality of films acquired by
DEG.”

But DEL is well behind this
film release schedule and Jack-
man says the reason is DEG.
“We didn’t have the delivery
from DEG because they’ve got
about a d[...]asons of being

re-cut, marketing problems
and so on.”
He is confident, though,

that the release schedule of 35
films in 1988 and 39 the
following year will be met. But
again, any deteri[...]t.

Meanwhile Jackman seems
happier to talk about the pro-
gress of DEL’s $10 million
studio complex (75 per cent
financed by the Queensland
State Government with low
interest loa[...]ion schedule. Despite
prospectus projections that the
Cades County studio would be
completed and fully opera-
tional by November 1987,
Jackman says: “The studio is
making giant steps and will be
finished on schedule and on
budget and will open in
February.”

Jackman is[...]rd’s science
fiction thriller, Total Recall
and the blockbuster miniseries,
Fatal Shore. Together, th[...]re expected to
cost about $40 million (well
above the average $5 to $10
million costs foreshadowed in
the prospectus) and take up
most of the studio’s space in
1988. The remaining smaller
films planned for next year
sho[...]ent lack of
progress when it was an-
nounced that the company’s
first production would be
Total Recal[...]uary 1988 —
not as originally announced,
End Of The Line, commencing
in November 1987. But Jack-
man says the reason for the
switch was purely that film
director Bruce Beresford, who
is on the DEL board, was
enthusiastic about directing
Total Recall himself when
given the script to read in his
capacity as a board member.[...]Raifaele Caputo is a lreelanee writer
on film.

Rolando caputo tutors in cinema
studies at La Trobe University and is a
freelance writer on film.

Brian Counts is television writer at
The Herald.

D

Anne-Made Crawford is a filmmak[...]llywood Fiegorter and film writer

and critic at The Sun.

Fred Harden runs a production
c[...]Jane Hutchinson is a finance
journalist at The Age.

Linda Jalvln was ionnerli/3 Hong[...]ne.

Peter Kemp is a freelance writer on
film.

Brian Mcfiarlane is a lecturer in
English at the Chisholm Institute and
author of Australian Ginem[...]Vikki Riley is a freelance writer on
lilm.

Sam Rohdle is a senior lectu[...]critic.

Teck fan is a final year student at the
Australian Film, Television and Radio
Scho[...]

What’s the future for Australian filmmaking? New World’s R[...]alia,
slammed Australian film unions and
attacked the local film industry as
”non-commercial” in the most pro-
vocative speech at this year's motion
picture exhibitors’ convention.

He compared the Australian film
industry to a small band of trend[...]n, and will continue to be,
largely unsaleable to the worldwide
mass market. He called the commer-
cial failures the industry has pro-
duced in recent years ”idi0t[...]New World contri-
butions to $52 million. So far the
company has not selected any pro-
ject for produc[...]lms pro-
duced by its US parent company.

He told the convention that the
Australian industry should be
divided into two. T[...]money. They make movies like
Kramer Vs Kramer and The Sound Of
Music, and there is absolutely no
dialogue about where the people
who make them come from, about
their cultural heritage or about their
ethnic authenticity or any of the
dialogue that I hear going on here,”
he said. ”That’s not to say that we in
the United States and in England.
Canada and other fi[...]-
making you will produce idiot
children.

”And I think you have an example
ofthat in the last few years. Australia
is less than one per ce[...]en in Australia. It's a frightening
statistic. In I983, I984 and 1985 less
than five per cent of the Australian
box office was taken by Australian
films. That’s a shame, because there
are many brilliant and talented Aus-
tralian filmmakers and they should
be given the chance to compete in
the world market from here. They
should not have to g[...]APERS

His comments provoked a retalia-
tion from the Australian Film Com-
mission’s chief executive, Kim
Williams. "I certainly don’t want to
think that I put myself in the role of
father, uncle, brother, friend or
confidant to a whole lot of idiot
children, or that all the colleagues I
have in the industry see me that
way,” he said, describing St Johns
comments as unfair and not repre-
sentative of the creative community
and film industry here.

”It[...]ence
research or creative or business
activity in the Australian film
industry.” He said that exhibit[...]ness successes. including
Picnic At Hanging Rock, the Mad
Max films, We Of The Never Never,
Puberty Blues, The Man From Snowy
River and Phar Lap.

He pointed out that only I80
features had been made since the
industry revival in T970. ”Of those
films, 35 per cent have got their
money back and paid real returns to
the investors involved, both govern-
ment and private — and that's a
better ratio than America.

”One of the things Dick neglected
to mention was that America[...]gregate in America,
are as unsuccessful as all of the films
from all of the other countries in the
world."

St John had earlier told the con-
vention that before his arrival here
he had expected that the future of
the Australian film industry would
be the same as everywhere else:
timeless, universal screen magic,
created by the combination of story,

Richard St John

direction and acting. ”The film
industry is a world-wide enterprise,
and the people in it make up an
international community,” he ex-
plained. ”But since I arrived here, Ithe industry is inter-
national. Just what is meant by an
Australian film? I'm beginning to
divine a small group that I think
defines it as films that don't make
money.

”To put it another way, had I
arrived to set up a shirt factory,
would I have been asked if I had
planned to make Australian shirts?
Would it m[...]mean shirts made in Australia
designed to compete on the inter-
national market, or for that matter
on the mass market in Australia,
with shirts made anywhere else in
the world?

”Let us say for instance that a
small b[...]very trendy
cross-section of Australians insisted
on elbow length sleeves and collars
of kangaroo skin for their shirts.” St
John said the trendy shirts may do
well in the small trendy market and
get a great deal of media approval,
even win some awards. ”But I
would probably go broke, unless of
course I could get the government to
subsidise the making of Australian

shirts.” he added. And, he told the
convention, if the shirts did not sell

it was no good saying it was bad
taste on behalf of the mass market.

"The mass market knows what it
wants and it will put i[...]ght be considered by
a minority to be better than the
movies of the market’s choice,” St
John said.

He warned that some elements in
Australia were in danger of denying
the market place the kind of films
that they would want to see. ”The
Australian film community has a
wonderful opportunity, one that I
feel very privileged to come here to
share. The skills and the talents to
forge ahead on the international
market are here, in place, they’ve
been paid for,” he continued.
”When I say international, I'm in-
cluding the Australian mass market.
I believe it is time for the Australian
film industry to stop cringing. It is
time for the Australian industry to
exploit the world market. Not to be
exploited by the world market. Not
to sit at home whinging about being
exploited. I think we have to go to
work and I think we have to do films
that are marketable on thethe Australian-
made Christian Broadcasting Net-
work[...]uly be a
classic instance of shooting yourself
in the foot,” he said.

”For some time I have been
examining my own thought process
and tr[...]not. Gillian Arm-
strong, who is certainly one of the
more Australian of the world class
filmmakers, has been quoted as
saying she felt a real loyalty to work-
ing here, she says, ‘I feel I should just
make the films I want to make and
not have a conscience about where I
work.’ What changed an Australian
fi|mmaker’s attitude? A strike. The
only way an industry is going to sur-
vive anywhe[...]ome and working.

”You can’t do it by driving the
Gillian Armstrongs out of the
country, the Bruce Beresfords or theon any one of
them might commence-2 ”When we
find them.” He said the company
was presently looking at more than[...]

The Women’s Film Fund is able to provide a subsidy
of up to 75070 on a limited number of places on
approved courses until June 1988.

If you wish to[...](03) 690 5144 or Toll free
008 338430) nominating the course you wish to
attend, detailing your previous experience, reasons for
wishing to attend the course, the overall cost of
attending the course and the amount of subsidy you
are seeking.

Please note s[...]participants and applicants who are eligible for the Women’s Film Fund
subsidy cannot be guaranteed of obtaining a place on the course. Early
application is advised.

CINEMA CLA[...]“. . . an informative,

absorbing and, between the

lines, amusing read . .

JOHN BAXTER “THE

WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN”
Price: $32.95

FRENCH CINEMA Roy Armes
The French film industry has
influenced every decade since

the invention of cinema.

French Cinema focuses on the
filmmakers themselves and

their contributions to the

world cinema.
Price: $24.95 Paperback

WARREN BE[...]WITH

AUSTRALIA’S BEST.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE NOMINEES & WINNERS

OF THE 1987 AFI AWARDS

FEATURE FILMS. The Tale of Ruby Rose

Vincent

Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train

To Market To Market

TELEMOV[...]Safe

Just Us
In Between

DOCUMENTARIES Painting The Town

How The West Was Lost

The Hour Before My Brother Dies

CINEVEX FILM[...]

“As a marketing man you ask
yourself, ‘How can I take a
library that has basically been
grinding out the same bucks
each year and make it not,
make it sexy?’ You put a
marketing coat of paint on it.
Thats how we view colouring
movies" — Charl[...]vice president Color
Systems Technology.

eware. The copy of Frank
Capra’s 1946 It's A Wonderful

Life that you pick off the shelf
of your video library is what many
would consider a counterfeit. Sure,
it’s the sweet, loving film of a
washed-up family man (played by
Jimmy Stewart) whose faith is
restored[...]Clarence — only this time
it's in vivid colour. The same goes
for Roger Corman’s 1961, two-day
wonder film The Little Shop Of
Horrors, as well as the Fred
MacMurray-starring The Absent-
Minded Professor and Night Of The
Living Dead.

lt’s A Wonderful Life is one of
the films that has figured
prominently in the furore over the
colourisation issue in America —
partly, perhap[...]its
place in popular and film culture,
as well as the comments of its
leading actor Jimmy Stewart, who
has admitted that he could not sit
through the whole of the
colourised version. “The faces are
orange-yellow, and the shadows
are not there, except for great, big
shad[...]omments, however,
would have us believe that it's the
quality of the process that he finds
objectionable. The real opposition
to colourisation concerns the

8 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

We might not see Jean Harlow as a brunette,
but the recent development known as
colourisation will be[...]we've never seen them before. PAUL KALINA
reports on the controversy it has provoked.

question of creative control, the
integrity of works that belong to an
historic and cultural heritage and
the rights, in this case, of a
computer company to tamper with,
and then profit from, another's
creative work. The late John
Huston, whose film The Maltese
Falcon is scheduled to be
colourised, cal[...]n
impertinence as for someone to
wash flesh tones on a Da Vinci
drawing". Asks Fred Zinnemann,
honorary president of the Directors
Guild of Great Britain: “Can you
conceive seeing Sunset Boulevard
or Stagecoach or The Best Years
Of Our Lives in colour, bastardised
by people intent on squeezing the
last possible penny out of
marketing these pictur[...]urner’s
collection of more than 3000 films
from the old MGM, Warner Bros
and RKO libraries. The other player
is Colorization Inc., a company
part[...]oach
Studios, whose schedule includes
Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon,
They Drive By Night, Laurel and
H[...]here’s also a wild, wild trump
card that hinges on Roach Studio‘s
ability to copyright colourised
versions of films drawn from the
public domain — where there are
an estimated 17,000 old black and
white films. The question is
whether the Copyright Office of the
Library of Congress deems the
process of colourisation itself an
original work[...]copyright protection, it seems
most unlikely that the large amount
of money ($US2000 to $3000 per
minute, $250,000 per feature) will
be invested in the process.

CEL distributes the colourised
versions of It's A Wonderful Life
and Night Of The Living Dead, and
has an option on some of the films

currently undergoing a paint job at
Hal Ro[...]igures (according
to an article in American Film, the
colourised It's A Wonderful Life
sold 55,000—75,000 copies, as
opposed to 10,000 copies of the
black and white original in 1985
and 1986) and adds that the
“intrigue” of the new process will
provoke curiosity. Interestingly, the
only evidence to support the oft-
made claim that the video-renting
public doesn’t like black and whi[...]CEL’s finding that they do
not work as well in the rental
market as in sell-through (ie sold
directly to the public as
collectibles) where they work
“astronomically well".

Whilst acknowledging the artistic
value of a film like The Elephant
Man and others “made in black
and white for a purpose", Kidd
believes that many of the films
being colourised would have been
made in colour if the stock and
technology had been readily
available. The proponents of
colourisation have argued that the
process does actually enhance
certain films, and have also
pointed out that the original
versions will still be available.

How well the original and
colourised versions can co-exist is
hypothetical, especially given the
imminence of television
broadcasting. Channel Ten[...]ilms and, according to
a station publicist, under the flag
of ‘Mr Movies’ Bill Collins. Channel
Seven is closely linked to the very
heart of colourisation with its
owner Univer[...]per
cent next March). According to
Channel Seven, the process is
being closely monitored, and it is
too[...]hether colourised
films will be shown.

Thus far, the Directors Guild of
America, the American Film
Institute, the Writers Guild of
America West, the American
Society of Cinematographers, as
well as[...]edly prompted
by Woody Allen’s comments
against the process in a New York
Times article, Senator Moynihan is
considering offering legislation in
the US Senate similar to that
proposed in the House of
Representatives, which would
require the “artistic creators" of a
film to grant their co[...]ns, like colourisation, could
be made. Meanwhile, the Directors
Guild in Britain has successfully
negotiated with the BBC not to
broadcast colourised versions from
the list of 100 films that the guild
seeks to protect, and has
convinced Channel[...]eels like Wim
Wenders’ black and white Kings Of
The Road, as much a homage to
the American cinema as it is about
the death of cinema, is a bleak
premonition. As George Stevens
Jr, chairman of the American Film
Institute puts’ it, “A generation
from now no viewer will have a
sure sense of how the world has
been seen through the eyes of
John Ford, Willy Wyler, Alfred
Hitchcock, Orson Welles, or any of
the great figures who did so much
to define Am[...]

‘"959 “FE VIDEO TAPE

IMAGING THE WORLD

Fuji, leaders in their field of film &
videotape technology, now offer a wide
range of products for the professionals
who demand and expect consis[...]

rouble at the Six Harmonies Pagoda. This ancient

tower in the southern Chinese town of Hangzhou had

been surrounded by hundreds of archers and lancers.

Inside, the emperor, the Son of Heaven himself, was
being held captive. A bit silly of the Occupant of the
Dragon Throne to have fallen for the beautiful-
courtesan-in-the-empl0y—of-rebels trick, of course —
oldest one in the book. A keen eye might have discerned
a distinctly unmartial atmosphere among the troops,
who, while waiting for further orders, sw[...]eted by a command
shouted from an upper storey of the tower. It came from
the only person who could make both loyalists and reb[...]d most adventurous
filmmakers. Having been one of the group of pioneering
young directors to lead Hong Kong cinema away from
the kung fu cliché in the late seventies, Hui decided it
was time to try her hand at this most stereotypical genre
of Chinese cinema. The result of three years of prepara-
tion and hard work, her martial arts epic, The Book And

10 —— NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

The Sword had its world premiere in Hong Kong in
August, where it was an outstanding critical success. The
two-part film was screened at the Toronto Film Festival
in September.

The Book And The Sword is based on one of the most
famous novels by Jin Yong, considered the modern
master of “kung fu literature”. Hui co[...]t Hong Kong University, doing a
master’s thesis on Alain Robbe—Grillet in 1972. This was
followed by a stint at the London Film School. When
she returned to Hong Kong in 1975, she worked briefly
as an office assistant to the director King Hu (A Touch
Of Zen). Moving on to television, Hui directed some 20
episodes for[...]ocumentaries.

Her first theatrical feature film, The Secret, came out
in 1979. Large portions of the film were shot in Hong
Kong island’s Western Di[...]ed tenements and narrow “ladder streets”
lent the area a special character long after other parts of
the territory had been taken over by multi—storeyed[...]ng apartment blocks and glitzy
department stores. The Secret is a cleverly constructed
murder mystery,[...]ng and sinister sense of
locale. Well received at the London and Edinburgh Film
Festivals, it establish[...]important new talent.
It also gave her a place in the vanguard of a new trend
towards cinema verite in Hong Kong cinema which took
film out of the studios and onto the streets.

“I didn’t consciously decide to be innovative,”[...]mply brought our TV stock—in-trade
with us into the cinema. I was just doing things as I knew
how.” As for being one of the first women to break into
what had traditionally been the dominantly male pre-
serve of Hong Kong filmmaking, she says that “When
working, I’m not conscious of being a woman.”

Hui’s u[...]rising (or categorisable) >

ICE-CAPADES: Ann Hui on the set of The Book And The Sword

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER — 11

In her second film, The Spooky Bunch, Hui turned
her attention to the world of Cantonese opera. Released
in 1980, it was a comedy involving ghosts, folklore and
the underworld. In one hilarious scene, a girl possessed
by a spirit suddenly gets the urge to watch television.
Traditional Chinese practice is to burn paper effigies and
money for the dead in the belief that what is burnt is thus
transmitted to the “other side”: contemporary Hong
Kong funerary[...]s to Porsches. So a paper
television is burnt for the girl, and she watches, literally
entranced, as images from an English language-teaching
program rise up from the flames. “Fork,” says the tele-
vision instructor. “Fuk,” repeats the girl.

Turning to yet another genre, Hui then made The
Story Of Woo Viet (1981), a violence-ridden story of two
Vietnamese refugees who get caught up in the Manila
underworld while trying to reach America u[...]it returned to a theme Hui
had first explored in the TV film Boy From Vietnam.

Hui’s best known “Vietnam film”, however, was her
next project, the ambitious and highly controversial
Boat People (1982). Based loosely on a Japanese novel,
it tells the story of a Japanese photo-journalist who wit-
nessed the communist “liberation” of Da Nang and
returns[...]veral years later. He starts out sym-
pathetic to the regime, or rather the image of it presented
to him by his official “h[...]is eyes to a different and terrifying reality. At the sound
of gunfire, for example, the children cry “The chicken
farm!” He follows them as they run to what turns out to
be an execution ground, where they strip the fresh
corpses of watches and false teeth. Eventually, no longer
able to play the neutral observer, he sells his camera
equipment on the black market to finance their escape
on a packed fishing boat. Helping them to freedom,
however, costs him his life.

For Boat People Hui insisted on re-enacting the libera-
tion of Da Nang, complete with huge crowd scenes and
tanks rumbling down the street. One of the most extra-
ordinary and dramatic scenes in the film, however, is
that which takes place on a minefield left over from the
war. In a tense atmosphere comparable in horror t[...]‘ 7 -. ‘.‘,_- .

TAKING FIVE: An extra from The Book And The Sword at rest

12 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

The Story Of Woo V/‘er

scenes in The Killing Fields, prisoners and other con-
scripts are forced to bellycrawl across the field picking
out the mines with sticks.

Boat People was shot onthe full co-operation of the
Chinese authorities, who provided her with tanks,[...]between China and Vietnam were already tense, and the
Chinese authorities liked the idea of anti—Vietnamese
propaganda for which th[...]ibility.

They did not anticipate that as soon as the film
premiered in Hong Kong, critics immediately interpreted
it as a disguised attack on Chinese communism itself:
“Vietnam’s today, H[...]as a
typical comment. One official who’d vetted the script
lost his post, but there never was any official statement
or protest, the Chinese authorities clearly having decided
that discretion was the better part of face-saving. It was
left to the European critics to fulminate against the
film’s “ideological unsoundness” when Boat[...]Hong Kong audiences, meanwhile, flocked to see the
film in droves. This was surprising and wholly un[...]ice poison by an industry which had
always relied on escapism and entertainment to keep its
rice bowl filled. Boat People became one of the ten top-
grossing films in Hong Kong cinem[...]

Love In A Fallen City, a love story set against the
occupation of Hong Kong by the Japanese in World
War II, was based on a story by the popular writer Eileen
Chang. Unfortunately, the film was neither a critical nor
commercial success. Hui began preparing for The Book
And The Sword.

The filming of The Book And The Sword was an epic
in itself. A co—production be[...]required location shoot-
ing all over China, from the ancient cities of Suzhou and
Hangzhou in the south to the former imperial hunting
resort Chengde, north of the Great Wall; from the
villages of the Yellow River basin to the Taklamakan
desert in north-western Xinjiang (Chin[...]he cites communication and physical hard-
ship as the most difficult aspects of shooting in China,
but[...]ing” locations.
Besides, she says, “Sometimes the difficulties themselves
become exciting. And the way the [mainland] Chinese
pay at least lip service to the fact that film is a cultural
thing . . . is quite a relief from the totally money-
oriented atmosphere of work in Hong Kong.”

Chinese producers may present the filmmaker with
other sorts of problems. The mayor of Tianjin, Li
Ruihuan, demanded to see the film before the negative
was released to Hui for final post-produ[...]illed. According to Hui, who flew to Tianjin
with the producers for the mayoral screening, “he had
some reservations about the characterisations — mainly
that [the rebel chief] was ‘not heroic enough’ and the
Qianlong emperor ‘too glamorous’.” Still, he conceded
that the film could be released in Hong Kong first, and
Hui agreed that the Tianjin studio could edit it according
to their o[...]ons and advice —- her luck will take a
turn for the better once she reaches 41. Not that it seems
to[...]a’s four-part series, Roads To
Xanadu, examines the paths taken by
Europe, China and Japan in the quest for an
ideal society. TECK TAN talked to pro-
ducer and presenter John Merson about the
preparation for the program.

_; It *

XA‘N.ADL‘J:~ Poorc[...]an

A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where /-llph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sun/es: sea.

hus did the English poet Coleridge, under the

influence of opium, describe his vision of his paradise

Xanadu, looking to the East for relief from the

bleakness of the Industrial Revolution. A paradise it
certainly wasn’t, especially under the British—imposed
opium trade of the 19th century. When East met West
under the gun-boat diplomacy of the Opium Wars in
China it was very much a one-sided affair. How was it
that a culture 2000 years old, once the most powerful
kingdom in the world, one that had developed gun-
powder, printing and currency when Europe was still in
the Middle Ages, could be so humiliated 300 years later
by the new European powers?

This will be one of the many questions posed by
Roads To Xanadu, a four-p[...]adio presenter
and descendant of George Morrison, the Australian

journalist privileged to be on[...]

of the Boxer Rebellion in China, is the producer, writer
and narrator of this series. He contrasts the different but
interrelated paths taken by Europe, China and Japan in
the quest for an ideal society. The Industrial Revolution,
Confucianism and the Meiji Reformation are juggled
about with the confident skill of a well—versed analyst.
Merson has the obsessive interest in his subject matter
that wil[...]happened with
Bronowski in his equally ambitious The Ascent OfMan
for the BBC many years ago.

The series is not intended to be an elaborate history
lesson nor a dry account of the rise of technology. By
comparing aspects of East and West — the Papacy and
Confucianism, the Venetian mercantile class and the
Chinese agriculture-based society, the Enlightenment
and the classical Chinese examination system, the Euro-
pean revolutions and the eternal Dragon Throne —
Merson hopes to show the philosophical foundations
that drive a society to innovate and advance. The last
two parts of the series bring us up to the present and
future; how Japan became the economic and military
power it was at the beginning of this century and how
China is still grappling with the problem of modernising
without Westernising, a problem that if solved could
well propel the dormant giant into technological

superiority in the next century.
One may well ask why it is that a s[...]NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

examines, amongst others, the role of Confucian
ideology, the Chinese Imperial system and post—Mao
economic p[...]nese social progress, is
being made in Australia. The more pertinent question
perhaps is why not. Conve[...]tners, and our migration make—up has
changed in the last decade to reflect more accurately our
region[...]r of Australia's new entre-
preneurial class from the East. The series has had a fairly
smooth path to production, considering the many
financial problems that can plague a project.

The idea started when Merson was a lecturer in
History and Philosophy of Science at the University of
New South Wales and was subsequently presented as a
series on ABC Radio Science. Then came an Australian
Film Commission grant in September 1985 enabling him
to research the television series further in China and
Japan. His previous working relationships at the ABC
with Robin Hughes, now the general manager of Film
Australia, and with David Roberts, the director of this
series, led him to approach Film Australia, who agreed
to the long-term project commitment of three years.

The series already has a pre-sale to the ABC, BBC and
an American-based PBS station. The crew, having com-
pleted location shooting in Eur[...]one of those projects
that can easily sell itself on its own merits. And why not
when the questions it raises are recognisably relevant and[...]Japan’s
economic advancements. Could it be that the rest of the
world will follow and seek, as Coleridge did, “[...]—.

s. is
. ‘E. a‘. 3.‘ _
! ,, ‘xi I’
< . V), I I __’_-g:

24‘ \

textile industry

XANADU: Model of a water frame used in the.

Due to the ever increasing demands of the
entertainment industry, we have been
forced to ex[...]ies, Rushes.

Wetryharder

V V V V >
“a move in the right direction”

Our new address

3rd F[...]

‘mane
¥i'§?.'SBllll5li

arias

THE
l\/IOVIES
OF
CHINATOVVN

Dim Sum and Yellow Earth might have
been the hits on the arthouse circuit —— but
what about My Cousin The Ghost and Jet
Lee ’s Shaolin Temple Part II? KATHY
BAIL reports on the other face of Chinese
cinema in Australia.

on[...]ess in Hong Kong and virtually no connections

to the Australian film industry, Melbourne’s

“Chinatown” cinemas attract young audiences more
intimate with the kung fu fantasy formula than the
politics behind the Chinese ‘arthouse’ films celebrated
by Australian critics.

The Chinatown Cinema and the Broadway constitute
one of the smaller outside markets boosting the profits
of the Hong Kong film industry. Hong Kong—made
films are estimated to pull in about $100 million a year
on the foreign circuit. High turnover and highly-
venerated stars are the key to the cinemas’ success.

So it was unusual when Wayne[...]Chinese-American family, Dim Sum, had a season at
the Broadway. It didn’t quite match the box office hit,
Flaming Brothers, but it ran for a week, following a
six—week season at the Longford, a cinema few Chinese
would normally con[...]night out.

K.T. Mok, distributor and manager of the Broadway,
rarely has to deal with “outsiders”[...]urely business”, like many
of his colleagues in the Hong Kong industry), alongside
the main Chinese distributor and exhibitor in Austral[...]wn Cinema Pty Ltd, is usually quite separate
from the film industry here: their links are with Hong
Kon[...]tributors and
exhibitors they have this sector of the market tied up.

Chinatown Cinema acquires product for its six
cinemas through the agent Joe Sui International Film
who represents m[...]es and other independents. So what’s popular
in the territory ends up on the screen here; according to
Mok, there is nothing s[...]use in any Chinese
cinema.

Knowing which Chinese/I-long Kong films are
“good” is a matter of being on the inside: it’s word of
mouth. You won’t find Peking Opera Blues, Orders
From Forbidden City, The Body Is Willing, or My
Cousin The Ghost advertised in the daily papers, but
there will be leaflets in Chine[...]restaurants and fantastically designed posters in the
cinema foyers.

Background information about the films can be
gleaned from magazines imported from[...]a translator, you’re more likely to get
gossip on the stars than a “review”, a form of criticism
that seems strangely out of place. The love/hate
relationship that usually exists between film critics and
distributors is non—existent for the Chinese cinema
proprietors. Not only would the film have finished its
season by the time a review appeared (the program
generally changes once a week; a film tha[...]d
disrupt a system of popular entertainment based on star
power or popular genres like kung fu.

Most of the films screened in the Chinese cinemas in
Australia are in Cantonese, and though one would
never guess from the posters, all of them have English
sub-titles. This may be reassuring but many of the
Hong Kong films operate largely on verbal humour,
and if you are one of the one per cent of non-Chinese
in the audience, you can often miss the joke.

Screenings are continuous; on weekends you can
catch a support and main[...]

She says that the cinema used to be a very popular
pastime before the Chinese video outlets opened.
“Everyone used to go to the cinema! Or when
communities wanted to raise money[...]ople happy to buy a ticket and go to a
movie. Now the situation has changed. People don’t
talk about what’s on at the cinema very much. In
conversation it hardly comes[...]have dinner and watch a film, instead of driving the
car, especially Chinese families, how many numbers,
sometimes you need three cars!”

The broader range of films available on video may
also contribute to its popularity. For[...]andarin, or even Taiwanese films, video is
really the only alternative. Chinatown does pick up
these kinds of films but the bulk of its product is in
Cantonese. There is also every likelihood that a film is
available on video before it is released theatrically. “It
is very hard to control the market for videos,” says
Mok. “The control of rights is less stringent here than
Ame[...]able.”

But according to David Tien, manager of the
Chinatown Cinema, most young people still want to
go to the cinema. He says his cinema opens films
almost sim[...]ith Hong Kong. Audiences
have probably read about the latest Jackie Chan
or Chow Yong Fong in the Hong Kong papers
(which devote at least two pages[...]comedy
features are Chinatown’s staple; once in the door, you
may as well be in Hong Kong.

Esther Woo is critical of the dominance of Hong
Kong cinema and says the Chinese films that are
imported, like Yellow Eart[...]audiences, and those films that are selected for the >

The kids from Shaolin

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER — 17

For Woo, not even SBS is a saving grace: “I have
asked SBS why they always show the same films. Not
only are they out of date, but it makes me upset
because they show people the wrong way of life.
Audiences will think Chinese people always want to kill,
blood everywhere. That’s wrong. They are only the
really awful Hong Kong-produced films. The good films
are never shown because they do business with the same
people.”

Apart from video, SBS is where most people view
Chinese or Hong Kong films. The Cantonese drama
series Empress Wu has had audiences glued to the
television screen for weeks. Peter Barrett from the
programming department at SBS claims there is no[...]nzoufaf, head of acquisition at SBS, says
most of the TV product comes from Hong Kong, while
feature films are generally bought through the China
Film Export and Import Corporation. She, ho[...]80/81, we bought some
features from Hong Kong but the problem was that

Private Life

18 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

most of the product was too violent: it was either cops
and r[...]which were a lot more serious and thoughtful
than the Hong Kong product.

“We tried to get more films[...]pays a flat rate of $5000 for a film which gives
the station licence to screen it three times over seven
years. After making the initial offer, it usually takes six
months to get the film and six months to process it. The
sub—titling is done at SBS. “Some companies are
reluctant to make a TV sale until they have exploited
the cinema release,” says Manzoufaf. “So sometime[...]ittle out-of-date.”)

SBS has recently acquired the rights to A Summer At
Grandpas, One And Eight, Bl[...]in
Mandarin, Neighbours.

dmund Allison, owner of the independent

distribution company, Quality Films, was the first

“outsider” to bring a Chinese film to Australia. He

imported The White-Haired Girl in 1953, but now
has more interest in Japanese and Soviet cinema. “I
haven’t seen many of the recent films, but the Chinese
films I used to have were never really commercially
viabl[...]Since then, Andrew Pike of Ronin Films, is one of
the few who has dared venture into what is unknown
te[...]ney and Melbourne, and may even find its way into
the Chinese cinemas. Ronin has also acquired the
satirical comedy Black Cannon Incident through the
China Film Corporation and is negotiating to buy Swan
Song, directed by Zhang Zeming, which was seen at the
1986 Hong Kong Film Festival.

Pike has found the corporation “quick and efficient
on the titles they want to sell”. Yellow Earth and Bla[...]“China has certainly become more aggressive in
the marketing of their film product. Just getting the
print can be expensive. Indigenous film stock is[...]port so special stock
is imported which increases the costs.

“Also, with Yellow Earth, the sub—titling was very
poor and had to be done again. We shared the costs
with the British distributors.”

But it has been when he has attempted to deal with
the Australian-based distributors of Hong Kong product
that he has run into real problems and expenses. “I
have found Joe Sui’s company difficult to deal with,”
he says. “The films are very expensive and I think he is
doing a disservice to producers in Hong Kong because
he only does business with the Chinese cinemas. He is
not aware there is business beyond that market.

“I have bought two Jackie Chan films from Joe Sui,
P[...]ran in Canberra,
but they didn’t go very well. I had to pay a high price
for them with little return. In fact, we lost money doing
it. I’d love to run 21 Jackie Chan festival, but the biggest
stumbling block is the distributors!”

Until then, buy some sunflower[...]kie Chan fly backwards to take revenge, wonder at
the rivalry and intrigue, and watch out for gh[...]

The film begins with a home
movie drama based on a ghost
story. It is full of self-taught
animation tricks and
superimpositions, but the main
thrust of the story involves each
member of the family expressing
fear in the face of the terrible
ghost who wishes to divide and
disrupt the happy family evening;
its finale shows the family
huddled together unified and rid
of the evil spirit.

As Song OfAir unfolds, Bennett
tell[...]his daughters for
fear of implied sensuality, and the
home movies are revealed as
complete artifice. The children's
lives are filmed, and every detail
of their development is shaped
by the father’s vision, his
assumption that his childr[...]t to, or within, a tradition of
oral history, but the history these
films are representing is once
again not their own creation, but
the apparatus of another:

standards of photograph[...]beauty,
posture and representation and,
more so, the whole question of
the person behind the camera.

Spaventapasseri, by Luigi
Acquisto, is s[...]mmaking. It is in
Italian, with subtitles, set in the
sixties but without any traces of
nostalgia. its basic themes are the
push and pull of family life,
transplanted from Italy to
Australia, and the sense of loss
that that implies, as well as the
value of the family bond.

The grandfather still obsessively
tends his pigs, the family still
upholds the supremacy of work
as an indicator of honour, the
homosexual son is frowned upon
and, when he is ca[...]e is a recurring metaphor
of death and renewal in the
companionship between the
grandfather and the grandson, a
sense of inheritance and
continuity in the last scene where
the boy buries the old man in a
routine fashion that rivals any
scene from Kaos, concluding the
film on a folkloric note,
somewhere in Altona.

racey Mof[...]young Aboriginal girls
in Sydney who spend nights on
the town — drinking, dining and
dancing, courtesy o[...]ht out.”

It carefully manoeuvres itself
around the obvious historical
space of black exploitation (ie the
past 200 years) and instead opts
for an intersection between the
first fleet arrivals and the present-
day realities of assimilation. The
former is recreated via the
colonists’ diary entries: women
are clamouring on board the
ships at night to sleep with the
‘captains’ while the diary entries
reflect a fascination with the
exotic that is decidedly paternal
. . . ”l am shocked at the brutal
violence with which the natives
treat their women”, while at the
same time marvelling at their
perfect breasts. Th[...]attempt to ‘blacken’

by holding them over the smoke.
The representation of the
colonists is a sensitive, albeit a
critical one,[...]white long disappeared.
Cut to Kings Cross, 1987. The

tributes of beads and button
necklaces have been replaced
with the great Australian
egalitarian gesture of offering the
woman a smoke. This is where
the film jumps the gun on the
Aboriginal-European debate and
becomes suggestive of a wider
malaise. The myth of the white
seducer is revealed in all its
ugliness and impotence as the
kind of desire that drives men to
search out mail-order Filipino
brides. Roles are reversed, and as
the exploited greets the exploiter,
the girls take these men for a
ride, playing a sophisticated game
with not only the dynamics of
prostitution, but also with a long-
standing tradition of white girls
flocking to the Cross to
’entertain’ foreign sailors. Viewed[...]e, Nice
Coloured Girls leaves you
ultimately with the uncomfortable
feeling that black Australia has
co[...]athy for our aggressive
culture. As a white woman I wait
for the day when we can project
with confidence an image of
woman like the one we see in
Moffatt’s film, standing on the
beach, her hair blowing in the
wind, an eternal mother and
lover, unchanging and
uncompromising. Sadly, the
white mother would have to be
filmed on beaches other than
these.

CINEMA PAPERS N[...]

1987 brings us a new 007

(Timothy Dalton), a new
Bond movie (The Living
Daylights) and a spate
of books to add to[...]s bookshelf.
SCOTT MURRAY takes
a look at some of the
recent writing about
007, and is shaken an[...]

half one’s mind, and I simply wrote 2,000 words a
day to show myself I could.‘

Published in March 1953, Casino Royale was
the first public appearance of James Bond,
secret agent’. The novel, according to
Fleming’s close friend Ivar[...]first books are
wont to do, gave little notice to the publishing
world of the torrential rain of gold gathering

strength over the horizon.’

Fleming soon settled into a ritual of one book
a year, written while on holiday in Jamaica
over the winter. Most were written on a golden
typewriter he had had specially made in[...]s, but his
output was fairly consistent, save for the last
novel, which was written when he was ill.

Bond became a film creation in 1962 with
the release of Dr. No. Anne Fleming wrote to
Evelyn Waugh about the film on 2 August
1962:

When we arrived very late at the private cinema
our personal guests . . . were very restive, and I
feared Mrs Crickmere [the Flemings’ cook] might
give notice and no more coconut soup; luckily she
found the film ‘quite gripping’. I wish I had, for
our fortunes depend upon it. There were howls of
laughter when the tarantula walks up James Bond’s
body . ’. . The heroine could not be eaten by crabs,
for though they imported huge land crabs from
Guernsey they died the minute they were placed on
the heroine’s body.’

Apparently, Ian Fleming felt quite out of place
at the screening, so it was not an auspicious
occasion for the Flemings. But fortunes were to
be made.
Seventeen[...]en made‘

and most have been massively popular. The

Bond books have continued to sell, despite
their author’s death in 1964. And to keep up
with the demand for new adventures, both
Kingsley Amis and[...]thorised Bond novels.’

As well, there has been the burgeoning
collection of critical and fan works, ranging
from Amis’ The James Bond Dossier to TheThe Political Career Of A Popular Hero”, by
Tony Be[...]of Bond film posters has just been
published.”

The original brief of this two-part article was
to review Bennett and Woollacott’s book.
Certainly the early press reviews were
favourable, including a laudatory one from
Professor Stephen Knight". But I found the
book a major disappointment, its other
reviewers seemingly not as annoyed as I by its
innumerable errors" and, to me, often quite
unconvincing arguments. As a result, the scope
of this article has been widened to include[...]lar work or body of fiction, they
break free from the originating textual conditions
of their existence[...]uired a
cultural life that is all their own . . . The figure of
Bond has assumed a similar significance . . . (p14)

Two questions the authors pose are: Why has
Bond become so popular? and How has Bond
changed in the process?

The traditional explanation for Bond’s
popularity is that his exploits gratify the
reader’s repressed desires and give a vicarious
thrill. As Hugh Gaitskell wrote to Fleming:

The combination of sex, violence, alcohol and — at[...], to one
who lives such a circumscribed a life as I do,
irresistible."

Amis goes even further when he claims, “We
want to be Bond.” (p38) He continues,

The notion has grown up that wish-fulfilment is
somehow immature and therefore suspect. I can’t
see this myself. I think wish-fulfilment is a
common and normal activity. I find self-advertised
maturity, pride in maturity, at least equally suspect.
No adult ought to feel adult all the time. (pp44-45)

Amis then remarks that “the works of Homer
are a far more compendious compens[...]t have been enduringly important
in Britain since the 1950s” (p18). These
concerns can be summarised[...]nd political
systems”;

2. “relations between the sexes, particularly with
regard to the construction of images of
masculinity and feminin[...]of discussion because Bond is a
“moving sign of the times” (1319). He has also
gone through major t[...]rds, there is no
one James Bond; there are many.

THE NOVELS

Fleming sawthe admiration of several
peers: Somerset Maugham, Ra[...]g most suitable for

translation into strip form. I often wish that I had
Ian’s virtues."

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEM[...]

journalistic mind, for his ability to get the
background details correct. The plots of the
Bond novels may be improbable, but the
accuracy and believability of the settings make
them seem less so.

Fleming was als[...]al writer,
who assumed a degree of sophistication on the
part of his reader. There are many allusions to
l[...]owledgeable “A” reader. This

is evident from the jacket designs they
commissioned. Such designs constitute one of the
primary means whereby literary texts are inserted
into available aesthetic and marketing categories

. . . The jacket designs for the first hardback
editions of the early Bond novels . . . consisted of
a collection[...]ionage or luxurious living, or both, and
connoted the category of superior quality, ‘literary’
spy[...]ng and convincing — that is, until one
looks at the books.

As one can see, Bennett and Woollacott ar[...]naccuracy
of analysis (or research) is typical of the book.
Their description of the first Pan paperback
editions is just as incorrect (p59).

But whatever 0ne’s view of the cover designs
(and 1 find them rather indeterminately
targeted), the early Flemings were well received
in the daily press and literary journals. Bennett
and Woollacott argue that,

I ._i? _
;
;:':5." A‘ ~ Q.-~.A‘g..

OO7’S COVER:[...]r’ who, in being familiar with or

informed, by the reviewer, of the series of literary

and mythic allusions deployed in the novels[,]
would be able to read and appreciate them as
flirtatious, culturally knowing parodies of the spy-
thriller genre. They thus functioned as ‘critical
legitimators’, making the Bond novels permissibly
readable in discounting t[...]oyale (1955) was obviously a major factor, as
was the beginning of the novel serialisations in
the Daily Express (1957).“ Bennett and

Woollacott hypothesise that the Bond

PAPERBACK BOND: The 1985 Pan
edition of Casino Ffoya/e

readership wa[...]appeal to this class in
Britain, they posit, was the notion of a “pre-
eminently English [actually Scottish‘“] hero,
single-handedly saving the Western World from
threatening catastrophe” (p28). In the 1950s
novels, the villain is usually Russian or in the
employ of SMERSH. This, Bennett and
Woollacott su[...]s a Cold War hero, an exemplary
representative of the virtues of Western capitalism
triumphing over the evils of Eastern communism.

(D25)

But the tone of the 19505 novels is not anti-
Soviet, nor do they pan[...]by
a potential West—East conflict. That some of
the villains are Russian is secondary. They are
comic in design and effect, just as are the
numerous non-Russian villains in the other
books. As Eco writes about From Russia, With
Love, the “Soviet men are so monstrous, so
improbably evi[...]omano
Ca1isi’s article, “Myths and History in the Epic
of James Bond”, published in The Bond
Affair. He writes:

it is evident that the West and the Soviet are used
as “real” pretexts for a univ[...]cal
dialectic between Good and Evil. Both one and the
other are so little characterised as to compel the
reader not to take sides for these as representin[...]ector of
“thriller” American literature, here the
“propagandist” representation of the Soviet (or,
rather, of Soviet espionage: and it i[...]looked) does not annoy
anyone. (p78)

In summary, the West-East aspects may have
attracted or appealed to some readers. But
given the comic tone of the novels and the
ways the villains are described”, I seriously
doubt that Cold War connotations were a
major factor in the books’ popularity.

As seen above, the Bond cycle of films began
with Dr. No in 1962. By comparison with the
modest sales of the early novels, the films took
off well and have (mostly) continued to be
extremely profitable. Premiere (US) reports
that the total attendances for the Bond films
now exceeds 1.5 billion“, and the films are still
to be seen in China and the USSR.

An immediate effect of the films’ popularity
was the dramatic boost in sales of the Fleming
novels”, giving him the wealth and notoriety of
which he had dreamed. A more gradual effect
was the transformation of his Bond into a new,
ever-changing popular hero. In the process,
creator and creation became separated.

This separation is mirrored in the changing
main titles of the films. They begin with ‘‘Ian
Fleming’s” overlapping the film’s title (“Dr.
No”, etc.). But with the arrival of Roger
Moore in the role of Bond (Live And Let Die),
the titles change to “Roger Moore as James

Bond 007 in Ian Fleming’s . . .”. Later thethe title
of his novel or short story. And as for the
phrase “James Bond 007”, that is now owned
by the producer.

In part, the changing titles reflect the fact
that the films no longer follow the plots of the
original creations. More important, Fleming is
no[...]s a principal ingredient; he has
been pushed into the background. Producers
Albert R. Broccoli and, for a while, Harry
Saltzman came to call the shots, and Bond only
became what they allowed him[...]he

had a snobbishness that he wrote into Bond in the
novels. It was the lack of humour about himself
and his situation which I didn’t like about the

character . . . As to Bond the man, one must
always use the humanity of his character.”

It is intriguing that Connery should want to
change what I suspect many readers liked
about the novels: the non-moralistic
representation of Bond’s toughness. The books
are never hagiographic towards Bond, unlike
the films, and that is part of their intrigue.“
The films’ producers also opted for

SPECTRE as Bond’s arch enemy, rather than
the Soviet SMERSH. Broccoli has said that, in
the period of détente in the early 1960s, he
wanted to de-nationalise the films’ villain so as
to maximise commercially t[...]uced it in Thunderball (1961), as
evidence of how the films affected his writing.

That Fleming continu[...][SPECTRE] formula is, of course, attributable to
the fact that, after the success of the film of Dr
No, he wrote with a different public i[...]an
interview with Peter Haining:

‘as you know I worked for Reuters in Moscow in

the thirties and I became fascinated by the Russian
secret police who were everywhere. It was through
my interest that I learned about SMERSH [which]

had been set up by[...]down, but always a bit

restricting because being the real thing there was

only so far I could go with them in a fictional
sense. So I invented SPECTRE to give me the
freedom of invention I needed for my more recent
novels.

I see no reason not to trust the author on this.

Another change was the introduction of
gadgets, enormous sets and high—tech effects,
which soon began to crowd the films (the
rocket suit at the start of T hunderball, which
gives Bond almost no practical advantage, was
the precursor of much silliness ahead). Always
concerned about audience reaction, Broccoli
reacted to the avalanche of complaints about
the effects overkill in Moonraker and returned
to bas[...]r Eyes
Only.

However, there is little doubt that the sheer
size of the sets and the currency of their
designs are an integral part of the films’
success. Production designer Ken Adam is even
awarded a separate chapter in the Haining
book." But while agreeing that Adam’s e[...]l in scope they
began to move Bond’s world from the comic to
the absurd. When Amis complained that the
parodying and joking elements of the films

7' ‘ . r ._ I
r;w' aw” /Q .. in 4.4.2.
LICENSED TO COMMIT HOMICIDE: Sean Connery

destroyed the real mythic power of the Bond
figure as displayed in the books", it is arguable
that the production design should be held
accountable as w[...]they have used existing buildings and locations
(the French stables in A View To A Kill, for
example). Their work, and its effect on the
transformation on Bond to film, is best seen in
For Your Eyes Only.

Casting also had an important effect on how
Bond’s world was transformed to film.
Conne[...]rly failed to
achieve, though he is not helped by the absurd
dubbing during his Sir Hilary Bray scenes.

Bennett and Woollacott also see a change in
the relationship of Bond and M when put on
film,

with Bond being increasingly distinguished from

and constructed in opposition to the films’

portrayal of M as a fuddy-duddy Establishment
figure. (p34)

This, they argue, reflects the freeing up of
attitudes in the ‘swinging’ 1960s. But the
bantering between Bond and M suggests this
“opp[...]mentally, as when Bond puts in his
resignation in On Her Majesty ’s Secret Service
and Miss Moneypenny has the sense to alter it
to a request for leave. M looks[...]d to find his owner isn’t going away
after all. The relationship in the book is much
tougher.

Finally, there is perhaps the most discussed )

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER —— 23

BOND: Roger Moore and Sean Connery (right). BARR[...]erican TV version of Casino Floyale

( element in the transformation of Bond onto

film: his sexuality and his relationship with the
‘Bond girl’. Bennett and Woollacott write:
Bond and ‘the Bond girl’ embodied a

modernisation of sexuali[...]nd femininity that were

‘swinging free’ from the constraints of the past . . .

The image of ‘the Bond girl’ . . . constituted a
model of adjustment, a condensation of the
attributes of femininity appropriate to the
requirements of the new norms of male sexuality
represented by Bond (p35)

But before examining the ‘Bond girl’ in some
detail (see next issue),[...]erring here
to Bennett and Woollacott’s chapter on the
transformation of Goldfinger to the screen”. In
examining the results of the process, they
compare the film and novel in terms of
character, plot and na[...]ortunately, they don’t get off to a good
start. On pp148-150, they list and discuss the
34 shots of the pre-credits sequence. The
problem is there are 74 shots in the sequence.
The first five shots, for example, they reduce
to two[...]cturalist criticism; one hopes it doesn’t
catch on.

Their reading of the action is, as well, often
superficial or confused[...]registered with
a number of . . . women — with the girl of the
pre-credits sequence . . .” (p158). But the
woman (Nadja Reigen) is a villain who is
keeping[...]nce that she is sexually attracted to
Bond.

What the filmmakers have done is make one

24 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

suspect Bond has gone into the dancer's room
with sexual intent (“unfinished b[...]at she is up to no
good. Her being deflected into the path of the
blow meant for Bond, therefore, is Bond’s way
o[...]interpret that earlier “unfinished business".

The Bond films may only very rarely be true
to a puri[...]2

13.
14.
15.

16.

17.

Quoted in John Pearson, The Lite Oi‘ Ian Fleming,
Jonathan Cape, London, 19[...]y writers
claim. See discussion in Kingsley Amis, The
James Bond Dossier, Jonathan Cape, London,
1965,[...]ming, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1975,
p103.

The novels which followed are: Live And Let Die,
1954[...]Dr No,
1958, Goldfinger, 1959, Thunderball, 1961, The
Spy Who Loved Me, 1962, On Her Ma/esly's
Secret Service, 1963, You Only Live Twice, 1964
The Man With The Golden Gun, 1965, all
Jonathan Cape, London The short story
collections are: For Your Eyes Only, 1960,
Octopussy And The Living Daylights, 1966; both
Jonathan Cape.

. Mark Amory (Ed), The Letters Of Anne Fleming,

Collins Harvill, London, 1985, p315.

. Almost all the reviews of and promotional articles

on The Living Daylights (19) refer to it as the
fifteenth Bond film, thus ignoring the two Bond
films not produced by Albert R. Broccoli[...]d Never Say Never Again
(1983), And then there is the television film of
Casino Royale, made by the Columbia
Broadcasting Company in 1954. See Peter[...]n Cape, London

. Oreste del Buono 8 Umberto Eco, The Bond

Affair, Macdonald, London, 1966. Originally[...]ny Bennett and Janet Woollacott, Bond And
Beyond: The Political Career Of A Popular Hero,
Macmillan Education, Basingstoke, 1987 The
book is part of the “Communications and
Culture" series (Executive editors. Stuart Hall and
Paul Weston).

Sally Hibbin, The Official James Bond 007 Movie
Poster Book, Hamlyn, Twickenham, 1987. The
book does not include posters of the two films
made without Broccoli's involvement.

Stephen Knight, “James Bond is the hero ol the
dollar”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July
1987, p47.

The innumerable inaccuracies range from dates
(eg, the authors have Fleming establish Glidrose
Prduction[...]it of reproducing quoted
passages incorrectly. In the chapter on
Go/dlinger, for instance. they make 10 errors in
the eight short quotes from the book; in one
quote from Arnis, they make seven mistakes. Thethe book's central sweep, But a
central argument must[...]in Pearson, p304.

Cited in Pearson, p299.

See "The Thriller Business: a verbal exchange
betwe[...]

Umberto Eco, "The Narrative Structure in
Fleming”, The Bond Affair, p60,

See Eco, The Bond Affair, for a fascinating
analysis.

Prem/er[...]alysis in Bennett and Woollacott, pp:-31-32,

and the fascinating sales chart on pp26—27.
Quoted in Haining, p140-141.

As Adrian Turner points out about the only time
the film Bond shows human fallibility is when he
fails to work out how to defuse Goldfinger's
atomic bomb. See the National Film Theatre
programme for January 1980.

Cited in The Hollywood Reporter, 31 December
1971, and in Bennett and Woollacott, p34.
"The Wizard of Bond: Ken Adam — Production
Designer", l-laining, pp128-134.

Amis is quoted in "The Bond Phenomenon",
Newsweek, 19 April 1965, but the wording used
above lS taken from Bennett and Woollacott,
p144.

Chapter 5, “The Transformations of James
Bond", Bennett and Woollacott, pp143-174,
“Casually he gets her out of the way by flinging
her in the path of the villain.” From a public
address by Houston and cited in Bennett and
Woollacott, p145.

In the next issue, Scott Murray
looks at the Bond women

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CINEM[...]

person in their absolute opposite image.

j[...]isual licence. Likejoan
Collins in a boiler suit. I would like to see
James Clayden in a gold lurex s[...]re a general type to which
filmmakers conformed, I would say that
James Clayden is not your average[...]y has been
manifested in an experimental history. I
get the feeling he has been searching for
the perfect expression and that he will
never be satisfied with what he turns up
— he enjoys the search too much to
relinquish it.

I spend the first halfhour ofthe
interview waiting for him to[...]ch he wrote, produced,
directed and performed in, I expect to
meet a mean kind of guy who throws his[...]unswick Street Scorsese.

But Clayden is a gentle man, a contrast
to the visual and atmospheric anxiety of
his semi-spoofy, semi—serious film-noirish
thriller. The punchy weirdness ofthe film
is only hinted at in his manner. He does
not pump the air with ideas the way his
characters pump bullets. He talks as ifhe
is painting abstracts.

In I/V2":/z Time 7?) Kill, Clayden plays
Detective Max Clements, the side-kick to
Lieutenant Nick Yates — magnetically
played by Ian Scott. Their mission is to
“rid the town ofits human garbage” and
its ring-leader the ‘laundryman’ (Peter
Green), an evil—doer referred to as “the
phantom spin-dryer’ ’.

Big on action, short on intellectual
debate, the pair wade knee-deep through
a town ofhoods (Falco[...]streets and rain: Melbourne.

Film and city share the same fringe
celebrities: actors and writers like[...]by. In a
movie of claustrophobic dimensions, even
the cast list seems an elaborate in-joke. I
ask Clayden ifall his friendsjust happen
to be fa[...]ing with him.

Clayden plays with topography. All the
elements of Melbourne are there, but
they are out[...]kids game with a tray of objects.
Somebody takes the tray away and you

I often have the strong desire to see a

have to remember what was on it. I watch
the film and know the city, but nothing is
quite right.

The West Gate Bridge spans the docks
— “the sort of place you could vanish into
another dimension”, a character eats
chips at the dogs and the Coke sign
flickers at dusk. The journey through
slime is tempered by a peculiarly[...]slaughter, Detective Yates
groans: “Christ. Now the sun’s come
out.”

A sense of dislocation is p[...]ess
which manages to both confirm and
complicate the seediness is a well-worn
device ofa well-worn but[...]n obj ective
irony and extravagant
celebration of
the genre.

The nostalgic cliches are inverted. The
audience is set up with familiar
expectations but those expectations are
manipulated, twisted, slapped in the face.
Well—known ‘real life’ personalities[...]roles. There are lots of
murders, but no blood.

The protagonists shoot their prey the
way Paul Newman shoots pool in The
Hustler, but Scott’s narration, delivered in
a dead-pan monotone like Sam Spade on
Valium, creates tragi-comic weirdness.
It’s lik[...]m: Bogart in Raybans workshopping
how to get back the Maltese falcon.

Clayden describes the effect as “a
lightness which is deadly serious’ ’.
I-Iaving multiple deaths but no blood
imposes an ironical edge ‘ ‘about the

Clayden is interested in the peculiar
weave ofthe human mind. His previous
films include Corps-e(1982), The
Ventriloquirt (1987) about a traumatised
man who can speak only through his
dummy, and the television drama The
Hour Before My Brother Diet (1986) based on
Daniel Keene’s play.

These are films which, one way or
another, deal with the imbalances of
human minds and the precariousness of
human life. The Hour, which won the
prestigious Canadian Banff award for
television drama this year, dealt with the
final meeting injail between a brother
and sister before thethe screen. The claustrophobic
intensity was well captured on film and
according to Clayden “perhaps better
than in the play”.

By heavily editing the play, and
through takes ofup to 10 minutes in
length, Clayden caught the highly
charged emotion ofthe drama. “The play
was very moving but there is a real
strangeness in watching it on stage, as if
it’s a twilight zone, not actually in a
prison. On film you feel that the
characters physically exist in a world
which is never fully realised in the play.”

In both preoccupation and style, The
Hour Before My Brother Dies is no barrel of
laugh[...]It is never
sloppy, but Clayden clearly relishes the
freedom ofhis own script, his own visual
whims.

Filmed in Super 8 (later blown up), the
effect is a carefully controlled impression
ofhaphazard movement and thought.
Clayden comments that “the way things
are made has to become part ofthe style
and the feeling”. The use ofSuper 8 was
“a deliberate reflection oft[...]roles as “a method ofcontrol’ ’.
Depending on Laurie Mclnnes as
director ofphotography to
captu[...]ns, Clayden was
determined “to get exactly
what I wanted without
having to consult
anybody”.
He took a part in the
film, initially to

l‘0llll l‘Alll0ll

streets of Melbourne. JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH goes along for the ride.

cover for an actor who dropped out ofthe
project, and found the experience
illuminating: “There’s a feeling o[...]you, it’s very strange. Physically
being inside the frame is interesting in
itself.”

The stylised characterisations in I/Vith
Time To Kill reflect Clayden’s preference[...]rtificial
emotionalism does not interfere between
the character and thethe
video market and almost certain to be
available on thethe way ofhis commercial
pretentions. He admits that “some people
would see what I do as experimental”, but
maintains that his amb[...]films that might be shown in any
cinema ’.

“I haven’t got anything against art-
houses, but I want to make films for the
general public, which don’t exclude
anyone at a[...]This is probably not a philosophy
which dominates the creators ofBeverly
Hzlls Cap 11. Clayden may not want to
“exclude anyone at all” but the fact is you
can’t please all ofthe cinema-goers all of
the time.

It will be interesting to see how
Clayden extends his style in the sequel to
With Time To Kill, tentatively titled K[...]Cummings and to be shot in 35mm
around St Kilda, the sequel will still retain
similarly stylised camer[...]tinues to explore his own
sensibility and give it the visual adrenalin
ofhis latest film, he will not b[...]than
could ever be said in a big one.

Looking at the West Gate Bridge
through thethe

right moment.” The same might be said
of Clayden.

CRUMPLED C[...]

KALINA takes a close look at the market, the
marketing and the comganies that fitting us
everything from $91.-ztfi Paeifie ta n ;i

Your Grave.

STEP INTO any one of the
new-style video supermarkets
that are sprouting around the
place and it’s evident that
access to films is only part of
the story. Shelves are stacked
from top to bottom wit[...]ndreds of
films in plastic boxes,
everything from The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre and
Sesame Street, but po[...]del train
with television screens set in
front of the wooden benches
the kids sit on. Some have
walls of television monitors
reminiscent of The Man Who
Fell To Earth.

Many might immediately
recognise this as the
heartland of an elaborate

marketing campaign —[...]d they would not be
wrong. For, ultimately, it
is the marketing of films
in packages that keeps
the industry alive, and
clearly some things,
like pac[...]nsational aspects
of a film can be
highlighted in the
dustjacket design,
even if it is at the
expense of accuracy
or originality.
According to the
cover of Dogs In
Space, this is "the film
they tried to have
banned". Evil Senses,
mea[...]er film, shamelessly
pronouncing its lineage with
the proclamation “91/2 Times
More Sensuous”!

Yet a consequence of this
business in which the public
is prepared to spend millions
of dollars e[...]broad range
of filmgoers‘ preferences —
from the Hollywood
blockbuster to the ‘art house’
film, from family type viewing
to[...]totally
different types of film.
Notwithstanding the limitations
of small-screen technology
and ‘cas[...]hat are
usually dubbed rather than
subtitled, and the handful of
black and white films that
have now been ‘coloured-in’
for video release, the
underlying tenet of the video
industry is that there’s room
for almost everything.

ideally, the marketing swipe
begins well before the film hits
the video store. In the case of
a film that had a theatrical
outing there[...]films not considered ‘good’
enough to be seen on the big
screen. The acquisition of
these rights is a much-
coveted pu[...]ongoing
contractual agreements —
especially in the case of major
international film producers —
rights are negotiated in the
wheeling and dealing
competitive market place of[...]lready been widely
suggested that video has
taken on the role of the drive-
in and suburban cinema as an
exhibition ou[...]observer went
so far as to write: “Video is
now the main source of
income for the film industry.”
His finding is based on a
survey by marketing
consultants Touche Ross, that
places home video presales
as the provider of 40 per cent
of a “typical studio produced”
film budget in the UK, 70 per
cent in the US and 30 per
cent in the rest of the world.

So diverse and voraci[...]ing number of these
films that will have bypassed
the cinema screen to debut on
video. in recent times, even
films with box-office
drawcards — such as
Crossroads (Ralph Macchio),
Under The Cherry Moon
(Prince), Love Letters (Jamie
Lee Cur[...]y Madigan) and Dream
Lover (Kristy McNichol under
the direction of Alan Pakuia)
— have all gone strai[...]n Adelaide
cinema). While this decision to
bypass the cinema circuit may
be partly based on poor
overseas box-office and
unfavourable audienc[...]re's
also been a couple of films
that have defied the normal
practice of being released on
video after playing thethe score of
films made specifically for the
video and television market.
The hard-core of this tradition
is the exploitation film, a
market which Charles Band
saw for such cult/trash films
as The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre and I Spit On Your
Grave when he established
Media Home Entertainment in
1979. Many of the films now
produced and financed by
Band’s Empir[...]ision have
primarily been video releases,
as have the Dario Argento-
produced horror films Demons
and W[...]Cherry bomb

And Orchids and Second
Serve (based on the life of
tennis player and transsexual
Renee Richa[...]for both TV and
video, but available in
Australia on video first.
Similarly, many of the British
Film Four productions that
were originall[...]nema and television
release are locally available
on video, and, ironically,
might yet escape their
intended exhibition avenues.
The distributors are geared
toward monthly release
pa[...]by anywhere
from three to 10 other films.
Whilst the headline film is
generally drawn from the

é_F“_I_I'-EFRS

mainstream, it is not
uncommon to find elsewhere
in the package films that will
have the cineaste and buff
salivating. if you've wanted to
know what’s happened to
Penelope Spheeris’ The Boys
Next Door (aka No Apparent
Motive), Martha Coo|idge’s
The City Girl, two 1984 Larry
Cohen films Special Eff[...]d Alley, or Richard
Marquand’s Until September,
the answer is they’ve sneaked
into video shops.

The distributors are also
cautiously exploring the
numerous possibilities of
video sell-through. They
envisage that the public will
buy and collect recorded
videos if th[...]ordingly, as is done with
books, records and CDs. The
films available on sell-through
are priced between $20 and
$40. One company at the fore
of sell—through, CEL, has
released some of[...]hilst Warner
has just made a number of
films from the 1940s and
1950s available. Roadshow’s
foray into collectibles has
included films of such recent
vintage as The Terminator and
Mad Max, as well as Chaplin
films such as Modern Times
and The Great Dictator.

According to Joanna
Simpson, chief executive of
the Video industry
Distributors’ Association, the
industry is currently “aiive
and well”. The association is
closely monitoring a Joint
Parliam[...]ooking at video
censorship. it is widely
believed the committee could
recommend tougher
restrictions on violence.

Censorship is an issue of
some concern to the industry.
Following the debacle of 1984
— when a backlash against
the voluntary system of self-
censorship forced the
Government to introduce a
system of compulsory
censorship — the industry,
according to Simpson,
“abides by the current law
and is very conscious of
acting responsibly". She says
that the association wants to
see the present system and
level of censorship
maintained, as well as
national uniformity. Though all
the states have handed their
jurisdiction to the >

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER — 29

The association has
undertaken a campaign aimed
at telling the public that it
must take responsibility for
censo[...]s should only
serve as a guide. She
believes that the industry has
received a lot of flak from
various[...]en to
unsuitable material. She is
sceptical about the
unquantified, yet oft-quoted,
instances of childr[...]no doubt
about video’s unique capacity
to offer the public affordable
access to the widest possible
range of films, the comments
of Jonathan Rosenbaum in
Sight & Sound are helpful in
determining just what ought to
be made of the phenomenon.
"And we stockpile films on
cassette the way that
countries stockpile weapons
or computers stockpile
information, what does this do
to the word-of-mouth
communication we associate
with public forms like theatre
and cinema? The unique
capacity of video is to make
the work mortal and immortal
at theTHE VIDEO

— a guide to the

CBS-Fox Video

CBS-Fox Video is a joint
internat[...]eral
overseas and local
independent distributors. The
company has also taken on
distribution for the current De
Laurentiis entertainment
venture.

Among locally-produced
films CBS—Fox distributes the
Winners series and has
acquired the two new series
from the Australian Children’s
Television Foundation,
Kaboodle and Touch The Sun.

As a result of the deal that
gave 20th Century Fox foreign
theatrical rights to Crocodile
Dundee, excluding the North
American rights held by
Paramount Pictures, the
company has just released the
film, speculating that it might
become the most profitable
video release in Australia yet.[...]eo and has diverse
interests in tape duplication
(The Duplication Centre), film
and video production and post
production (Video Channel,
VTC). Last year, the company
acquired NZ News which
includes Vid-Com,[...]post—production facility.

CEL is a company at theI) and distributes new
releases of MGM/UA
(Polterge[...], Slam Dance and Sid And
Nancy.

CIC-Taft

CIC is the worldwide marketing
arm of Paramount Pictures and[...]. ClC-
Taft Video is a joint venture
between CIC, the James
Hardie Group and Taft
Broadcasting of the US. The
company continues to release
many a Paramount
blockbuster, such as the
Beverly Hills Cop films, Top
Gun, Witness and the Indiana
Jones films,

ClC—Taft is not involved[...]y
evaluated".

Crystal Screen
Entertainment

Over the past i8 months a
turnstile of owners has passed
through the doors of Crystal
Screen Entertainment, which
was originally known as Thorn
EMI Screen Entertainment. The
company was bought last year
by Alan Bond, who sold it after
only a few weeks to the
Cannon Group, reportedly
pocketing £50 million profit for
the brief affair. Cannon, it is
generally believed, was far
more interested in the
purchase of Elstree Studios
and British cinema screens
than in the video company it
had also acquired down under.
Around the middle of 1987,
Cannon sold the company,
which by that stage had no
product to re[...].

With an eye to ongoing
distribution contracts, the
company now releases a
variety of product from Ne[...]Tony Zeccola, who also
runs AZ Film Distributors. The
company releases independent
productions, including action-
oriented films (Rage Of

Honour, The Retallator), horror
films (Demons, Silent Night,[...]Can She
Bake A Cherry Pie?, A Flash Of
Green and The Brother From
Another Planet. Palace also
has an extensive collection of
early Merchantllvory films and
owns the Australian and New
Zealand licence to Playboy
Vid[...]s

RCA-Columbia Pictures-Hoyts
Video probably has the longest
release schedule, and certainly
the longest name, in the
Australian video industry. it
releases product of Columbia
Pictures, Hoyts Distribution
and, as from the beginning of
1988, Tri-Star, Orion, New
Line, Cannon and other
independents. According to the
company, this represents 30
per cent of the total output of
the Hollywood studios.

The company is deeply
committed to its ‘Silver Screen’
collection which includes many
films from the Columbia library.
It is also involved in sell-

through, as well as music
video.

Seven Keys

Now owned by the Parry
Corporation, Seven Keys
releases films thea[...]ell as
most Kings Road and Samuel
Goldwyn films.

On the forthcoming schedule
is The Big Easy, the Jim
McBride directed New Orleans
cop film with Dennis Quaid,
and Ellen Barkin, and the
controversial Prayer For The
Dying with Mickey Rourke, Bob
Hoskins and Alan Bates.

Roadshow

Roadshow Home Video is a
division of the Village
Roadshow Corporation, and
operates under[...]s: Roadshow, Premiere
and Walt DisneylTouchstone.
The group release a diverse
range of films dra[...]

numerous independents.

The Premiere arm releases

two films each month, ofte[...]Blood
Simple, Smooth Talk and Letter
To Brezhnev. The company is
very active in sell-through in
the areas of feature film, ‘how-
to’ tapes, cartoon compilations

and the ever-popular Jane
Fonda Workout tapes.

Vestron
A[...]Video Inc. which

Of Wolves, Teen Wolf and
Conan The Destroyer.
Vestron has entered an

product, which[...]Wyn & Me.

Warner

Warner Home Video distributes

on video Warner, UA and
some Cannon films.

Theatrically, the Warner Bros

films are released through

Village Roadshow. Over the

next months and possibly

years, Warner will release The
Living Daylights, The Witches

Of Eastwick, Empire Of The

Sun (Steven Spielberg), Lethal
Weapon, Full Metal Jacket and

Hanoi Hilton.
The company has just

released a number of Warner
films from the 19403 and 50s
to sell-through, about which the

company is “cautiously
optimistic".

In the past, Police Academy
1 and 2, Rocky IV, Cobra and
Gremlins have provided the

company's most successful
titles.

NDUSTRY

product — covering the action,
horror, drama, children's and
music genre[...]es
and is actively involved in film
production in the US. Amongst
the company's most successful
films are sleepers such as He-
Animator, To Live And Die In
L.A., as well as The Company

agreement to distribute Filmpac

number[...]e films
such as Kangaroo, High Tide

CREEPSHOW 2: The Great Savini at work

To keep up with the bulk and diversity of films
released onto the video market — some 1000 films
are released eac[...]libraries, and
that are likely to be overshadowed on the shelves
behind such better known newcomers as Sta[...]d, Crocodile Dundee, ’Round Midnight,
Crimes Of The Heart, The Name Of The Rose and
many, many more . . .

For much the same reason that lt’s nice to have one's
favourite books lining the shelves — and to not have to break
into the library at midnight to check what so-and-so said[...]ibles (from $24.95 to $39.95),
you can now add to the booty American films of the 1940s and

1950s, such as Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, A Star Is Born .

(restored), Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder, 42nd Street, Cat On
A Hot Tin Roof, Grand Hotel, Intermezzo, Babes In Arms and
Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon. Of a more recent vintage
there's The Pink Panther, The Naked Civil Servant and Santa
Claus The Movie.

TOM SAVINI needs no
introduction for afic[...]d by being
banned from Australian video
releases. The scalping scene
from Maniac and the flesh-
eating zombies in Day Of The
Dead, for example, did not
escape the censor’s scissors.

Both the man and his art
can be sampled in new
releases Creepshow 2 and
Schizo. He did the special
effects and also stars,
appropriately, as The Creep in
Creepshow 2, the sequel to
the 1982 Creepshow, which
was devised by George
Romer[...]from
stories by Stephen King, who
also appears in the film as
The Truck-driver.

Schizo, written and directed
by Ro[...]gore-fest that
begins with a graphic
nightmare of the axe—murders
of a love-making couple.

Before we get to see the
remake of Back To The
Beach, which has been
released in cinemas in
America, take a trip back to
the Pepsodent smiles of
perennial nerds Frankie
Avalon and Dwayne Hickman
with ‘king of the Bs' director
Norman Taurog in three
milestones of[...]culture: How To StuffA Wild
Bikini, Dr Goldfoot & The Bikini
Machine and Sergeant
Deadhead.

See where it all began; in
the laboratory of Dr Goldfoot
(Vincent Price), who in[...]red beauty queens
dressed in gold bikinis to lure
the wealthy magnates he
learned about in a financial[...]produces a leather clad,
female judo expert.

In the sixth outing of the
Beach Party Gang, How To
Stuff A Wild Biki[...]

32 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

in the cottage of a reposed
school teacher, Jean Travers
(Vanessa Redgrave). in
solving the mystery of John
Morgan's suicide, the film
plots key moments of Travers’
life — her[...]nd ambiguous encounter.
Typical of Hare’s work, the

narrative serves as a vivid
illustration of the woes of
contemporary Britain, a
gloomy vision of[...]irection
elicits some excellent
performances from the cast,
which includes Joely
Richardson, the real-life
daughter of Redgrave and
director Tony Richardson,
whose role as the young Jean
Travers is haunting and
mesmeric.

The Australian production
Initiation seems to have
bypassed the theatrical circuit
to debut on video. This light-
weight adventure film centres
on an American teenager
(Rodney Harvey) who comes
to[...]stranged father (Bruno
Lawrence) and then embarks
on a series of adventures that
a local Aborigine, Ku[...]ith), predicts will have fatal
consequences. From the
contrived storylines, one-
dimensional characterisations
and flat dialogue to the
cutaway shots of wildlife and
spectacular landscapes, there
is little to allay the suspicion
that the film was callously
designed to reach the so-
called ‘international audience’.
But who[...]mon Burke, Martin Sacks
and Sigrid Thornton under the
direction of Don McLennan
(who also did the screenplay
adaptation) and was reviewed
in the last issue of Cinema
Papers.

If you subscribe to the view
posited in a recent Cinema
Papers review that there are
three kinds of movies, the
Dreadful, the Fun and the
Interesting, Empire State
would sit quite comfortably in
the latter category. This
recent British offering (co[...]n this country) is
a contemporary thriller set in
the sleazy and corrupt
docklands of London’s
Easten[...]ipe at Thatcher's
Britain as a last-gasp lunge at
the throat”, it presents a
group of nervous and troubled

ciphers — the hapless
journalist, the opportunistic
‘rent boy’, the heartless
yuppies, the shrewd American
property developer — caught
in the whirlwind of a plan to
gentrify the depressed, though
valuable, docklands. From its
c[...]adic
denouements hover, before
being submerged in the
sequences inside the Empire
State. This stylish, neon-lit
nightclub, where the local old-
time wheeler-dealer bets with
the fledgling yuppy his every
possession in a no-holds-
barred slug-fest, boasts a
vivid mural of the Manhattan
skyline which seems to
contain every metaphor the
film strives for.

When it comes to compiling
a bibliography of films about
the world of newspapers, the
1942 Joseph Mankiewicz
production Woman Of The
Year should not be over-
looked. Set in that ‘d[...]ared to
Rosalind Russell, “You’re a
newspaper man, Hildy” in His
Girl Friday, Woman Of The
Year cast Katharine Hepburn
as a savvy, political[...]cent
performance. Ironically, given
that this was the first film to
team Hepburn and Tracy, the
script by Ring Lardner Jr and
Michael Kanin digs deeply
into the couple’s emotional
rifts with, in the case of a sub-
plot involving a refugee ch[...]

For the past year the film
has not been able to find wide
cinematic release in the
United States. It doesn’t fall
into any particu[...]gers’ bodies are not
violated by sharp objects; the
dead do not walk the earth;
people just melt. Set in the
ugly environment of Lower
Manhattan’s derelict slums,
the film depicts a group of
winos, bums, and other
as[...]"Viper”, and decides to
make a quick buck.

In the first few minutes of
the film the consequences of
drinking “Viper” become
obvio[...]of him
is a slime-covered bony hand
hanging onto the toilet chain.
A pathetic symbol of one
man's struggles against
circumstance? No, just an
example of the delightfully
low-brow humour in this low
budget horror epic.

The lives of these "street
trash” are further threa[...]oto), a
psychotic Vietnam veteran
and overlord of the local
junkyard where they all live.
He is more than just a parody
of Rambo, he is the
quintessential warrior:
homicidal and pea-brained[...]r
windscreens.

Freddie (Mike Lackey) is
probably the film's good guy,
if a filthy, wise-ass, no-hoper
can be a good guy. He shares
an old car in the junkyard with
his innocent younger brother
Kevin (Mike Sferrazza). They
blame their lot on their father,
who was of course never quite
the same since returning from
Vietnam. This idea of the
Vietnam war being somehow

Wizard Of Oz, The Incredible Meltin I
anti Raiélers Of The Lost Ark have iiafililea in

it — only Street Trash has dared to

go the

whole way. PAUL ASLANIS looks at tléig
in the cult video genre —— the melt meme.

responsible for the
pathological behaviour of
virtually a whole generation is
seen again in the character of
Bill (Bill Chepil), a Vietnam vet
policeman.

Bill is a tough cop sent to
investigate the growing
number of strange melting
deaths. in one scene, after
beating a Mafia hit man into
unconsciousness, he further
humiliates his opponent by
throwing up on him. A cruel
but fair man, in the great
tradition of Eastwood.

in addition to this[...]unkyard owner and
his perverted dog, and
possibly the silliest scene ever
filmed, as Bronson in a light[...]castrates a
bit player. Something for
everyone.

The special effects by
Jennifer Aspinall (of Toxic
Av[...]barrage of expletives, Street
Trash should become theI ..

i I - ‘ - §’-57.

STREET TRASH: Melting moments

Street Trash. The characters
are horrible, not horrifying, as
are t[...]es Street
Trash from all other horror
films.

For the past 10 years,
horror films have followed
tiresome formulas which, for
the most part have ensured
their enormous success.
Firstly there are the “Slasher”
films. Friday The 13th (now
part 6), and A Nightmare On
Elm Street (now part 3) are
two recent examples of the
dozens of films of this type
available on video. The best
of these attempt to recreate
the tension and terror from
the legendary shower scene
in Psycho. Most fail to rise
above a level of misogyny at
its most brutal. But the victims
in Street Trash are not
vulnerable teenag[...]say “yeuch".
Secondly, there have been
films of the alien/zombie
variety, such as Evil Dead,
Reanimator, etc. All of these
films rely heavily on their
special effects to revolt, and
therefore entertain the
audience. Gallons of blood,
decapitations, and
disembowelments are the real
stars of these films.
Xenophobic, reprehensi[...]t plain stupid,
zombie/alien films have
glorified the mutilation of the
human form in every
conceivable manner. Street
Tr[...]onism in latex.
Reworkings of old themes

make up the bulk of the rest
of the horror genre. Vampires,
demons, werewolves and
malevolent spirits abound.
Some new special effects, but
the same old story of good
versus evil in one form or[...]ists in Street Trash
— only scum versus scum in
the moral vacuum of this
nauseating extravagan[...]

instead, we take our cue from
two re[...]o
account "particular films and their
relation to the histories of their
form”, and the current, very
tangible, forces which inform such
criticism — cinephilia, popular
culture, obsessions with the
personal. We want to make it clear
that we intend to steer away from
the ‘post modernist’ artisan stance
and unashamed[...]we
hope, an auteurist line3 in order to
demystify thethe proliferation of
auteurist filmmakers, and at least
half of the Australian films in this
festival were from established or
emerging Super8 auteurs.

The films of Bill Mousoulis are,
for many of his crit[...]ho lead routine, banal
lives totally based around the idea
of the family home — and not
particularly dynamic on a socio-
cultural level. In other words there
are no hybrids at work here which
may place the films in the Lynch
basket. Faith, his latest and to date
his best, is the last in a trilogy
(following Back To Nature — a[...]ory, destiny and its
metaphysical counterparts in the
‘external’ world. Faith more or less
follows[...]ility, but there is no sure-
fire way of defining the characters’
relationships by the narrative
which the film sets up. Instead,
Faith could be read by its[...]not to mention its
eloquent ellipses in time —- the
couple together in front of the TV,
the wife later alone on the same
couch. The film manages to
maintain this in typical Mousoulis
style, with an almost complete
absence of dialogue. The

characters, in the style of true
Bressonian tragedy, follow pre-
ord[...]ing
cakes, watching TV. going to work,
caring for the baby — defines a
wider view, that life revolves[...]rie Mieville’s short Faire La Fete
(screened at the Sydney and
Melbourne film festivals), Faith is
pa[...]eternal digression. Mieville’s film
too hinges on a superlative play of
emotive gestures, schizophr[...]at a window watching a
parade, but her eyes rest on a
young migrant child and his
mother in the window of a flat
across the street. She is pulled
inside by her lover, who pe[...]ip. ironically, but
not illogically, she resists. The same
polarity of desire exists in Faith;
between that which we externalise
as the ideal and that which,
through human frailty and s[...]al obsessions.
Another film that puts itself out

on a limb in its precarious narrative
concerns is i\lobody’s Home, by
Denise Lloyd and Richard Pedr[...]rces. Using some beautifully
emotive close-ups of the
characters’ faces, the film follows
the group through back alleys and
squats in their sea[...]r
place’. Particularly poignant is a
long scene on a wintry beach
where, to the tune of the
Eurogliders’ Heaven (in any other
film you’d laugh), the three frolic
in a very temporary, joyful
freedom. it is a short-lived
happiness, however, as one of the
characters is subsequently arrested
for car theft, and the other two
finally just wander away down a
lane. D[...]ely
engaging in its honesty and
simplicity. Based on the real life
experiences of its writer/co-
director,[...]nyone working in
Super 8 or otherwise could match
the ingenuity of Chris Windmi|l’s
Congratulations C[...]strange things happen. A woman
spends all day in the dressing room
continually changing outfits and
doing the ‘dead ant dance’ of high
school fame — lie on your back
and wriggle your arms and legs in
the air. The boutique girls become
rather unnerved — one wet[...]oyfriend ’Foxhead’
(whose only concern is for the
beach and his mates) for help. It's
eventually revealed that the
woman in the dressing room is a
cook to an aristocratic lady, who
often goes on spending sprees at
her employer's expense. In the end

Auto-portrait

Another avant-garde genre that

goes back (at least) to the sixties in
Australia is the diary film. This type
of autobiographical work ha[...]ng something of a comeback
recently among some of the older
16mm avant-gardists — in This
Life's Body[...]al relationship to this type
of work, and some of the best films
in the festival were of this genre.

in Fiona Trigg’s Robin's Mouth, a
strange case of mistaken identity
prompts the filmmaker to re-

l:_\“‘ . .

-urn-nasianuasn.-su_a:wcr

RILEY look at the work presented at tee I

examine a particular period in her
past and make comparisons and
contrasts with her current situation.
The soul-searching comes to an
abrupt halt, however,[...]to return to a prior
preoccupation — observing the
household insects. Although the
film refers lightly to the illusory
nature of memory and perception,
its mos[...]quirky obsession with
incidents that (not unlike the
movements of insects), seem to
have no important significance, but
which make up a good part of the
fabric of life.

Auto-Portrait by Simon Cooper is[...]oncern with ways of
creating stories and meaning, the
film moves along a variety of lines
from formal n[...]autobiography (old stills,
bits of old films) to the anti-
aesthetic realism of the filmmaker’s
visions of the surrounding
landscape. Its approach to
autobiography is deliberately open-
ended. As the quote in its synopsis
says, "Time . . . won't tak[...]get a map
and search.” Showing little faith in
the power or ‘truth’ of overly
determined ‘orig[...](fatefully?)
over time, looking for meaning
after the filming rather than before,
and attempting to allow the film to
create its own portrait of him.

This is not the comprehensive
overview we might have arrived at
u[...]f work we
would have liked to talk about. But
for the sake of more considered
views of individual films[...]nother festival.

FOOTNOTES

1, Adrian Martin, “The Legend of Billy
Jean", Filmnews, August 1987.

2. "Thethe
Super 8 program at the Sydney Film
Festival). published in Filmvi[...]

Cinema: the expressionistic, the
theatrical, the realistic, and the
persona style — or, what he also
terms the “strictly Brand X”. We do
not really need to[...]adonna as Brand X
material. But having said this, I feel
we may be caught in some sort of i
double dilemma. On the one hand, in
the face of Madonna’s most recent
screen appearances, there’s the
vague and desperate feeling that
something has been closed off. On the
other hand, we may well ask, does it
not seem pre[...]tempt an
appraisal of Madonna’s screen
presence on the strength (or
weakness) of only three commercial
films?

Maybe not. At this point, I am
reminded of James Dean, who
acquired the X quality only after his
death and in the space of two films or
less. Brand X appears to be that
something which grabs the public’s v
attention regardless of output. And
yet we cannot claim the benefit of
hindsight for Madonna as we could for
Dean; understanding as well that the
mystique that is Dean would probably
not loom so[...]ly death.

There are two things to consider
here. The first is some definition of
the anonymity, X. Elsewhere, Durgnat, 4
along with John Kobal, elaborates on
the peculiar X quality as “always
some flashpoint of emotional affinity,
some resonance with the longings and
experience of the audience”. Like
Roberta’s penchant for the word
“desperate” in Desperately Seeking
Susan, I’ve taken a liking to the word
“fIashpoint”. It means that a mere
gestu[...],
and it's an experience which will
persist after the fact. The second
thing to consider is that Madonna i[...]

E exclusively within a given number of
films. The significance of the latter is
not to be taken lightly: the extent to
which it is understood will determine
the success or failure of her screen
appearances.

Let us rewind to somewhere in
1986. Essentially, it’s what I see as
more or less the mid-way point
between her ascension to tame (the
Boy Toy period) and the place where
she is situated today (the classic,
mature woman). In recapping, it can
be characterised as the calm after the
storm. The whirlwind of publicity
which met her marriage to Sean Penn

. — which included reports of Penn's
attacks on the press and the much
sensationalised nude pics in
Penthouse and P[...]Penn
alongside, was to prove more of a
thud than the anticipated
thunderstorm. But the release of a
new album, True Blue, was pre-
eminent. And with it something
happened.

Earlier in the year, taking her
marriage as a crucial marker, the
words “Madonna Louise Veronica
Ciccone entered a new phase of life
this summer”, opened the introduction
to Harry Dean Stanton’s interview for
Interview. I mention this only because
it anticipates something, which is
now, but which also goes with the old
Madonna. There’s certainly something
indeterminate about Stanton’s
interview; the phase isn't complete.
By June, however, Rolling Stone I
carried Madonna on the cover with
the headline, “The New Madonna”,
and not only does it announce

, something new, it shows something

i new. Gone are the long waves of hair,
the unmistakable crucifixes, the
glitter of bracelets, belts and chains,
the Boy Toy accoutrements, and with
them supposedly had gone the
virginlwhore label that has become
her epitaph. N[...]ty discovered. Soon after,
Vanity Fair celebrates the same with
“Lady Madonna: A Change of Face”.

What separates the old from the
new Madonna is that the old draws

more toward what we could call a
‘philosophy’ than anything else; while
the new is more of a look, comparable
to that of the classic movie idol. Her
beauty and her physique h[...]ntral to who Madonna is. She has
been compared to the likes of Monroe,
carole Lombard and Grace Kelly, and
only lately to Katharine Hepburn. If
the latter comparison seems weird, it
is also easily[...]hai surprise has been
noted for its similarity to The African
Queen, while her latest film, Who's
That[...]in Stars)
points out: “Without an awareness of
the aesthetic weight of a film star's
accumulated image, a director can
easily make mistakes that destroy the
unity of his film.” Braudry could easily
have b[...]ut. Instead, it
would be more precise to say that the
film has overcalculated.

In Desperately seeking[...]its her character Susan like
a glove, not because the film is
creating a star but because it knows
an already discovered one: the
Madonna of the music industry, the
Boy Toy, the goodlbad, virginlwhore
personality. It seems to b[...]hat Madonna should do no more than
linger through the film with that
indefinite X quality of a movie idol.
The rest is up to someone else. Thus,
the undeniable and pervasive sense
that the film is dealing with a
spectator’s extraordinary fixation on a
movie star: trailing her, touching the
things she touches, buying her black
and gold iacket (hence the

significance of selling and buying the
iacket on the grounds that it belongs
to someone famous, Elvis[...],
but not that bad”. No doubt, we are
back with the goodlbad girl,
virginlwhore label. The problem with
Who's That Girl? is that it's not
de[...]perately
seeking Susan, it's constantly
replaying the notion of thethe instances of the X personality, and
leave very little for the imagination. .
The title as question performs a
decidedly disingenuous
ingenuousness.

I want to return to the June 1986
cover of Rolling Stone. Madonna’s hai[...]f
different pieces, but a simple black
dress, off the shoulder. Her right hand
graces her shoulder and draws our
attention to a flower that’s placed in
her cleavage. I’ve seen that dress and
that flower somewhere be[...]called
Boys’ Night Out. It’s a symbol — in the
film — of _N_ovak's purity in the face of
certain compromising situations. so
what'[...]in 1986 was Iier new

purity, a new innocence all the more

-' ,. innocent. She is forever a virgin. I '

- think this is what has been"sa‘¢lIy
missed by Who’s That Girl? Recall ‘
Madonna: “When i say virgin, like in
my song, .l’m not th[...]

oThe Lighthorsemen
ORunning From The Guns
OShe’s Gotta Have It
OSummer

0The Untouchables

0 HOPE AND GLORY

1987 has proved a[...]ostalgia. Not only has there
been a lot of it but the quality has been
superior. In their disparate way[...]4 Clzaring Crow Road, Peggie Sue
Got /\/Iarrierl, The Tin Men, Hootiers and
Radio Days have all engaged in the
remembrance of things past and, in one
way or other, achieved an intelligent
purchase on their material. And now
Hope And Glory, a surpris[...]rector john Boorman, joins their
ranks.

Like all the films above, Hope And
Glory has the look and sound ofits period
and place — England[...]’s-eye-view of a
vanished world, bringing us to the verge
of nostalgic indulgence time and again,
then at the crucial moment undercutting
this tendency with comedy or a severer
truth.

The film is marvellously evocative of
time and place, immaculate in its
observation of the outbreak of war, of
London in the blitz, of evacuee trains, of
beaches fenced off with coils of barbed
wire, the well—known voices of political
leaders and starnmering king on the
radio. All of this has, of course, been
done befo[...]its use of
Bill Rohan (Sebastian Rice—Edwards),
the sharp-eyed, imaginative child who
stands in for the young john Boorman.

War is the greatest fun for young Bill
who protests to his mother against
evacuation with “l’m gonna miss the
war and it’s all your fault.” He doesn’t,
however, and he and his gang prowl the
rubble of bombed suburbia, night-
marishly lit to recall the waste land of
Paul Nash’s “The Menin Road”,
acting out war—time cliches (“[...]ex (an orderly inspection of what
is concealed by the bloomers of a girl
called Pauline) and death (Pau[...]e is a
heightened excitement that goes along
with the anxieties, a sense of ceaseless
activity and movement that has shaken
up the lower-middle-class suburb. But
what accounts for so much of the film’s
pleasure is not so much the careful re-
construction of the period as theon her own.
Her friend Mollie (Susan Wooldridge,
Daphne in jewel In The Crown) goes off
with a Polish pilot, leaving the husband
who confesses to having loved Grace but
has been too poor in the Depression to
think of marrying. Bill’s teenage[...]ith him, finds she wants him with
sexual urgency. The solemnity of the
Kings Speech onthe arcane mysteries
of the googly passed on to Bill by his
father at the outbreak of war “in case
anything happens to me”, is a source of
continuing solace in the boy’s world so
lovingly and unsentimentally recreated
in the film.

When the Rohan house is hit and the
family is forced to move in with Grace’s
parents in the Thames Valley, the film
assumes the look of childhood idyll.
While the ridiculous old Grandpa com-
plains of “Too many[...]th farce and tensions.

As Churchill announces “the end of
the beginning” on the radio, the river-
side greenery is just touched with
autumnal gold. Ah, one thinks, a rites-
of-passage movie, but the nostalgia for
childhood itself is recognised for[...]seen as a time of incom-
plete understanding and the film is wry
and tough enough to see that adults[...]s. One recalls those Holly-
wood England films of the 19405 in
which Britain was seen as moving
towards[...]shelter sequence
which recalls Mrs Miniver where the little
ones had Alice In Wonderland read to
them: here, the shelter is so dankly repul-
sive no one ca[...]

Originally titled Le Rayon Vert,
literally The Green Ray, Summer is
loosely based on, and takes for its
premise, Jules Verne’s novel of the same
name. It opens, however, not as one
might expect with a quote from the
novel, but with a single line from the
19th century French poet Rimbaud —
“Ah, for the days that set our hearts
ablaze”; it’s this that provides a key to
understanding the formal and stylistic
aspects of the film. The hearts surely
belong to the French New Wave move-
ment of the sixties (of which Rohmer
was a principal founder) and the days
must be those of Italian Neorealism: the
Rossellini of Stromboli and Vzaggzo In
Italia; the De Sica of Bicycle Thieves; and
among Rohmer’s[...]59.

That a filmmaker considered by
many to be at the forefront of his art
should return for inspiration to his roots
may seem a paradox, but then Rohmer
the classicist has always believed that the
only way to advance in art is to maintain
close ties with the past. It is as if

Rohmer, at 65 and surely reaching the
end of his filmmaking career, has
decided to return to the origins of his
cinematic aesthetic.

What appealed to Rohmer and his
colleagues in the New Wave, and what
was ultimately to liberate a whole
generation of directors from the stifling
European tradition of “quality”, was
the Neorealist spontaneity of approach.
Born of econo[...]y,
it produced a freshness which was
evident from the first frame, as is the
case with this magnificent film.

Shooting fast, in natural light on
16mm film, with no script (90 per cent
of the dialogue was improvised by the
actors themselves) and no precise loca-
tions wor[...]nce, Rohmer’s
fluid yet probing camera is given thethe green
ray.

An archetypal Rohmerian heroine —
y[...]nd a planned trip to
Greece has been cancelled at the last
minute. Despite invitations from her
family[...]— first to
Cherbourg, then back to Paris, then on
to the Swiss Alps and finally to Biarritz
on the Atlantic coast. It’s here that she
overhears a conversation about Verne’s
novel and the existence of the green ray,
and it’s this which drives the film to its
conclusion. According to Verne, if one
closely observes the sun setting over the
ocean, one may be lucky enough to wit-
ness a curious meteorological pheno-
menon. just as the top of the sun sinks )

ROHMER WITH A VIEW: Marie Hiv[...]

green light and, to[...]a perfect premise for Rohmer,
who always believed the camera, or
more precisely the cinema, to be capable
of near magical revelations. In Summer,
as in all his films, the actors never give
the impression of performing in front of
the camera — it is simply there, almost
unwittingly, in front of the actors. lt
waits patiently (without the trickery of
complex editing) passively observing the
action until, in a flash of recognition,
true ch[...]ction
to speak of, nothing really happens; it’s
the anticipation which interests Rohmer
and what dist[...]have real not just celluloid souls and,
finally, the courage of their convictions.
Delphine’s behaviour is not imposed on
her by the necessities of plot or dramatic
development. Rather, she regains the
power, as we do in life, to shape her own
destiny. The narrative, when viewed as
a whole, seems to contain its own
internal logic rather than one imposed
on it by the dictates of conventional
dramatic structure.

If Rohmer is a classicist, he is also a
realist. It’s the complex interrelation-
ships between time, place and sound
which anchor films that otherwise might
have the lightness of a fairytale. We feel

40 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

the approaching chill of late afternoon
and we hear the sounds of summer holi-
days. The wind rustles the leaves, an
aeroplane takes off in the distance and
dialogue is interrupted by children play-
ing on the beach. It is the perfect
balance of the oppositional forces of
fiction and documentary which gives
this film its power.

Summer, which won the Golden Lion
at the 1986 Venice Festival, is the fifth in
Rohmer’s series of “Comedies and
Pr[...]marks a significant
shift in direction and may be the most
revealing of his concerns. According to
Rohmer it was the success of Full Moon
In Paris which drove him back to thethe mainstream, by
making low budget films (Summer cost
less than $1 million) which don’t rely on
mass appeal for financial viability, that
he beli[...]es) Production company: Les
Films du Losange with the co-operation of the French
Ministry of Culture and P.T T. Distributor: Filmpac.
16mm/35mm. 98 minutes France. i986.

OTHE
UGHTHORSEMEN

So much has gone into The Lig/zt/zorsemen
that you feel a little guilty in[...]charges, a Beersheba and a
wilderness carved from the Bush . . .
and you’re not happy with the story?

Well, of course, there is a story. The
broad, sweeping story of what became
the last great cavalry charge in the
history of modern warfare. It was
towards the end of World War 1. Eight
hundred young Australia[...]were ordered to make a seemingly
suicidal charge on Turkish positions,
commanded to charge across fiv[...]r such magnificent moments, we
need a David Lean. The picture is grand
and the canvas wide. A Lean can swirl
the cinematic brush around and still
delve in to pain[...]iver that bigger landscape. It is
when we look at the people in close-up
that their work tends to blur,[...]n to
cliches, superficiality and predictability.

The failings of The Lig/zthorsemen leave

FEARLESS IN GAZA: The Lighthorsemen

Expiry[...]

No. 15 (January 1978): Tom
Conan. Francois Truffaut. John
Faulkner. Stephen Wallace. the
Taviani brothers. Srl Lankan
cinema. The lnlsnrnan. The Chan!
01’ Jirnrnie alacitsrriitn.

No. 17 (Augu[...]lo Hupperr. Brian
May, Polish cinema. Neiislronr.
The Night 7770 Prowler.

lilo. 19 (January-February 1[...]alism. Jaoanese cinema.
’eter Weir. Water Under The
Bridge.

Ho. 29 (October-November 1980):
30!: Ell[...]ocka. Stephen
Nalaco. Philippine cinema.
Srmsrng. The Last Outlaw.

No. 38 (June 1982): Geoff
'3urrowes[...]el Pattinson.

Jan Saroi. Yoram Gross. Bodyillne.
The Sum Dusty Movie.

tip. 53 (September 1985): Bryan[...]Golan. WW8 And Burke.
‘he Great Bookie Robbery. The
Lancaster MW?! Affair. rock
videos.

RDER FOR

CINEMA PAPERS PUBLICATIONS

The Documentary In Australian Film Motion Picture Yea[...]ar at $25 E] 2 years at $45 D 3 years at $65.

El I am a new subscriber. j l am renewing my subscript[...]Australian dollars.

TOTAL 3 ................ ..
I enclose a cheque for $ .................................. ..

Please debit my Bankcard/Mastercard to the amount of $ ..............................[...]

. Interviews 6 News 0 Reviews 0 Features
1 and the only comprehensive survey of

who’s making what in Australia I

jj1 » -- _..__._:._-,_.-__._.____ _ ‘ ’ V[...]8 issues 1 Back issues

. . Add to the rice
‘ 1 year 2 years 3 years 5)‘ each[...]

First, a little backgrounder. The Aus-
tralian Light Horse of the 1st AIF was
formed in 1914. Easily identified by
their emu-plumed hats, the Lighthorse-
men rode horses called ‘walers’ ([...], which were
faster and could travel further than the
heavier English breeds. In the war, they
became part of the British army that
defended the Suez Canal, eventually
helping drive the Turks back across the
Sinai desert into Palestine. The film
focuses on their time under the new
commander-in-chief, ‘Bull’ Allenby,
and, ultimately, the risky plan to chal-
lenge the desert and smash through the
Turkish defences to win the precious
wells of Beersheba.

There’s a lot more to it than that, of
course, which, for Jones in writing the
screenplay, must have provided some
very special[...]-
ence would be students of military
affairs. And the attack on Beersheba
came after a complex series of battles
and decision—making. Somehow this has
to be explained in the movie. Generally,
such exposition is infiltrated[...]e uses a sunset to
explain Gallipoli; another has the Padre
(Brenton Whittle) and Bourchier (Tony
Bonner) educating the audience on
Beersheba, “the well of Abraham”, in a
most unlikely conversation.

The Lzig/rt/zorsemen begins with a heart-
stirring ch[...]ood-setter.
Then we’re aboard a train which has on
its wagons a banner with the slogan,
“These horses are doing their bit for
Australia: what about you?” A chal-
lenging cry to the young men of Aus-
tralia.

We join four young men[...](John Walton), who is blunt and un-
complicated; the loyal but not-too-bright
Chiller (Tim McKenzie); and the self-
confident, formidable Irishman called
Scotty (Jon Blake). All four actors per-
form expertly with the somewhat in-
adequate material that they’re pre[...]r john” letter from his
girl back in Australia, the audience does
suffer a real sense ofloss. Then in[...]helps), a raw recruit who
hopes to replace him in the group. So

disapproving are the three other horse-
men that we know that before too long
our man will surely prove himself and
become one of The Four Musketeers.
And he does.

And that’s one of the most irritating
aspects of this film — its predictability.
Apart from Frank’s death, and the
short—circuiting of a bar-room brawl by
a British hurrah for the Aussies, there is
little that surprises us.

Dialogue is also woeful in parts.
Bonner, sucking on his now well-
gummed Anzac officer’s pipe and
m[...]nd a war!”, just about sums it up.
But, over in the enemy camp, a non-
sensical German general, straight out of
H0ga7i’.r Heroes casting, plays him for a
break with a stiff—lipped, “There’s little

joy in the defeat of an unworthy
opponent”.
The photography is exceptional

throughout, from the Light Horse’s
tented city at dusk to the ambush of
Turkish troops. The camera, however,
does linger so long on Beersheba that
you start to wonder whether it is not
simply the pride—and—joy of the set-
makers, but a model that you’re looking
at.

The soundtrack relentlessly grinds out
Mario Millo’[...]l music, which is
lush and appropriate to much of the
film, but eventually becomes a pain in
the ear. Other annoyances are minor:
Arab children who look like the film
crew’s well-scrubbed, well-fed nippers;
a[...]hornton)
and Meinertzhagen (Anthony
Andrews); and the unlikely, unmilitary
bearing of Serge Lazareff as the officer
Rankin.

Nevertheless, after all the Zulu-style
posing at the tops of ridges, the Light
Horse do make a splendid final charge.
That gallop to glory, if nothing else,
makes The Lzig/zl/zortemen memorable.

Brian Courtis
THE UGHTHORSEMEN. Directed by Simon Wincer
Producers:[...]mm.
131 minutes. Australia. 1987.

O RUNNING FROM
THE GUNS

Dizizsion Four lives, in this action~packed,
car-chase-filled item of holiday fare.
Definitely in the best (or worst) tradition
of Australian police drama, Running
From The Guru has half-heartedly trans-
posed a well-worn seventies television
formula into eighties cinema.

The villains are big business and

nouveau riche. The police have been
downgraded from heroes to a running
joke, the real heroes are a working class
boy Dave (]on Blake), and his Vietnam
vet sidekick Pete (Mark H[...]nd
feisty, fighting evil wherever it may lurk
via the State Crime Commission. How-
ever, she is not qui[...]to
outrun a pair of hoods in a panel van
(despite the fact that she is driving a
black turbo Porsche),[...]macho heroes once they
effect a dramatic rescue.

The film never really moves into the
glossy, fantasy world of full—blown
cops’n’robbers, fast money or vigilante
movies. The one excursion into high
society serves only to expose it as
ridiculous and fundamentally ineffec-
tual, and the emblem of The Establish-
ment, Sirjulian, is (intentionally or not)
a bizarre caricature. Unfortunately, the
possibility of social statement is utterly
underm[...]hing Dave
and Pete as struggling capitalists, and
the heroine as a daughter of the estab-
lishment herself.

Of course, cliche, impr[...]ot do not necessarily doom a
film — often quite the contrary. This
one has attempted to include roman[...]itous violence. So what went
wrong? Perhaps it is the all-pervasive
flavour of amorality. Right and wro[...]being motivated by avarice or
revenge, where even the greed is on a
petty scale. There is no persecution to
outrage[...]ittle here to arouse
sympathy or excite interest. The pair of
protagonists are too obviously nice boys
to be anti—heroes, too corrupt to be the
genuine article. Throughout their mis-
adventures, nothing seems to be gained
except mayhem on a major scale, and a
small amount of cash in the closing
scenes. There is an almost overwhelm-
ing[...]ather than aid
any attempt to create tension, and the
familiar cast is continually struggling to
overcome a long heritage of soap opera,
and rarely succeeding.

The keynote of the film is the compre-
hensive nature of corruption. Our
heroes[...]nice guys. Trade
unions are corrupt, but useful. The
upper classes are corrupt and useless;
big business is corrupt and dangerous. If
Runnzng From The Gun: has an aim apart
from the display of wholesale violence
and a smattering of kinky sex, it is this.

Melinda Houston

RUNNING FROM THE GUNS“ Directed and written by
John Dixon[...]

1

Take two images. The first, the design of
the film’s title in the credit sequence. The

letters

which form the title The
Untouchables are bold, also sculptural, as if

ma[...]h light. There is also
something architectural in the design of
the alphabetical letters, like columns, an
image of s[...]there is a sense of

‘integrity’ about them. The second image

involves a story element. Oscar Wallace

(Charles Martin Smith), the most comic
and therefore most vulnerable of Eliot[...]Frank Nitti
(Billy Drago), Capone’s key trigger man,
disguised as policeman and elevator
attendant shoots them both point blank
through the head. When Ness (Kevin
Costner) peers through the elevator doors,
director Brian De Palma moves from the
sight of the bloodied bodies in a slow,
lingering pan shot which reveals the word
‘Touchable’ written in blood across the
elevator walls.

What fascinates about this scene[...]its exquisite narrativity, nor its
brutality, nor the way in which it mocks
the Press’s naming of Ness’s Federal
agents as “untouchables”, nor even the
profound moral outrage it provokes from
Ness (aft[...]ysterical
face-to-face confrontation with Capone,
the first of only two such confrontations).
No. What[...]ng, angular, bloodied graffiti-like letters,

COV\i/B.OY OUTFIT: Andy Garcia, Sean Connery

42 — NO[...]hich in their very difference both mimic
and mock the title credit and all the
connotational meanings one ascribes to
their desi[...]. Title
credits are often like signatures — for the
studio, the director, the production
designer — and more often than not they
carry meanings relating to the film’s
mood, intention and vision. To extend the
metaphor, and run the risk of sounding
absurd, is it not possible that[...]letters are another title, another
signature for the film, made by a different
hand with differing int[...]ndeed, if it were not for De Palma’s com-
ments on the film. In certain statements
De Palma goes to some[...]vid Mamet’s screenplay. Of this he has
said: “I look upon it more clinically, as a
piece of mater[...]ed,
with certain scenes here or there. But as
for the moral dimension, that’s more or
less the conception of the script, I just
implemented it with my skills — which are[...]e. You get out of your own
obsessions; you are in the service of some-
body else’s vision, and that’s a great
discipline for a director.”

De Palma is drawing on a distinction
between the auteur and the metteur en
scene, a distinction well known from
t[...]in Smith and Kevin Costner

UN

7 1

direction of The Untouchables on the side
of the metteur en scene and not the auteur
— in other words he brings to the film his
considerable skills at mise en scene and[...]be true to say (in general
at least) that this is the first De Palma film
in some time which has met wi[...]ty. As an
aside, it is worth mentioning that when
the character Ness says in a pensive
moment towards the end of the film, “So
much violence! ’ ’you could cut the irony in
the air with a knife. When our diligent
reviewers on The Movie Show give The Un-
touchables their unqualified seal of
approval[...]it in colloquial terms,
one suspects that this is the De Palma film
one endorses when one really isn’t
endorsing a ‘De Palma’ film.

I would like to think that The Untouch-
ables is two films in one. This first is[...]near perfect model
of classic narrative, in which the forces,
tensions, polarities are clearly delineat[...]nd so forth);
where optimism and idealism pervade the
overall moral tone of the film. De Palma
has called it a “traditional Ame[...]re . . . with a tremendous amount of
integrity in the characters”. Now, not in
opposition to, but in contrast, one could
seek an undercurrent to the film in which
a darker, bleaker vision would arise; an
undercurrent in which the hand of De
Palma would be more clearly visible.
Speaking of literature, Nabokov once
talked about the nerves, the secret points,
the subliminal co-ordinates of a novel,
points where the signature of the author
are more evident. In this other scenario it
would not be the character of Eliot Ness
(in as far as characters also embody the
vision of a film, but not exclusively) who
is the focus, but that of Frank Nitti. More
than Robert De Niro’s Capone, Drago’s
dark angel of death is the real pulse of this
film, a truly De Palmian chara[...]at De Palma
seems to be doing with Nitti is using the
character as a way of modulating and
manoeuvring[...]removed from his own.

One could then argue that the real nerve
points, the subliminal co-ordinates of the
film’s plot are the sequences dealing with

the Nitti character. Each of Nitti’s actions
causes moral outrage —— the detonating
briefcase left on a barstool and innocently
picked up by a young girl (“Mister you
forgot your bag!”); the aforementioned
elevator slaughter; the machine gunning
to death of Jimmy Malone (Sean
Co[...]nfrontation with Ness. If at
first it seemed that the paradigm of
good/evil was played out along the
Ness/Capone axis, it becomes quite clear
in the roof-top confrontation that it has
been the Ness/Nitti combination which

has been at play.
N[...]apone as

Ness does in relation to Malone (repeat
the names and you’ll notice the rhyme).
This is a film with a fair dose of oedipa[...]y as De Palma well knows; he makes it
spin around the film but never grounds it
in a symbolic subtext of any real conse-
quence. Malone is the good father figure
who must teach (“Here endeth the
lesson!”) the innocent hero the ways of a
corrupt world (the Chicago way). The
father dies for the new-born hero and the
new and better world which is born with

him. Cap[...]ely represents that figure. Like Ness
who follows the knowledge of Malone and
acts in accordance, Nitti is at the service
of Capone. In as much as history (though[...]showdown between Ness and
Capone be a non-event, the dramatic con-
frontation between the forces of good and
evil is displaced onto the roof-top sequence
between Ness and Nitti. The subsequent
courtroom scenes are almost completely[...]victory over Capone represents
nothing more than the fall of a corrupt
philosophy of illegal corporate capitalism.
His traits are those of the traditional
gangster figure — crime, capital and
celebrity. He is, as he says, a business
man who feeds off a twisted world, a
figure tolerable[...]s Ness’s struggle is
with Nitti, who represents the ecstasy of
evil. Though his deeds are at the service of
Capone, one has the feeling that they may
as well have been independent of motiva-

L E C

tion. (“The abyss of evil is attractive
independently of the profit to be gained

by wicked actions . .” —[...]vation, but is
soon lost in its own machinations. I think
also for De Palma, evil is profoundly
exhibitionist: embodied in his mise en
scene, his insistence on metaphors of
vision, but also in his actors’ perform-
ances, Al Pacino as Scarface being the
supreme example.

A hero like Ness is antithetica[...]As De Palma puts it: “What’s
different about The Untouchables is that
there’s a man of principle and honour
triumphing over the evil system. That
usually doesn’t happen in my world,
because I don’t see it that way. I see the
system as going on, crushing individuality
and idealism; people who[...]difference that De
Palma speaks of one should see The U -
touchables in the light of De Palma’s two
other gangster films made in the eighties.
So dark is Scarface that it could be sub-

titled ‘The Tragic Sense ofLife’, and Wise )

CINEMA[...]

Rolando Caputo

THE UNTOUCHABLES Directed by Brian De Palma
Producer.[...]87.

44 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

0 CARAVAGGIO

The painter l\/Iichelangelo Merisi
(1571-1610), calle[...]gio, is distinguished by two
achievements: he was the creator of
some of the most profound religious
paintings in the history of western art,
and he was a murderer.

D[...]historical biography.
Its a very personal view of the artists
life, a project which jarman has been in-[...]for seven years. Its fatal flaw
as a film is that the director’s conception
of the nature of creativity is based on a
form of channelled sexuality which
resists anal[...]s are notorious for
producing classics of kitsch, the aesthetic
elevation of the banal. The problem
seems to be that if you scrupulously
follow the historical record you will fail
to explain that intensely intellectual
moment when the artist produces art.
The more intense the expression repro-
duced on film, the more banal appears
the subordinate life. The banality inevit-
ably invades the significance of the
paintings.

Another approach is to concentrate on
the act of creation and to ask what
elements of the artist's consciousness,
whether psychological, social or his-
torical, went into the making of the
paintings to attempt to explain creation
itself. This is the alternative attempted
by jarman and in a much more
restricted sense by Paul Coxls recent
film on Van Gogh. There are certain
interesting parallels between the two
films.

Both assume a great deal of art history
knowledge. I would challenge anyone
who didn't know these details to explain
the subject matter and social circum-
stance of the commission for The .Marryr—
dom 0fSaim‘ .il/fart/tew in the Jarman film
and the slashing of Van Gogh’s ear in
Virzcenf. This biographical negligence,
this refusal to distance from the subject
permits the director to escape the
criticism that his portrait isn’t historic-
ally accurate. In Paul Cox’s case the
interesting complexity called Van Gogh
is ironed[...]ch nasty matters as sex
and money, extracted from the voice-
over reading of Vincent’s letters until[...]marily to be literary works rather than
works for the cinema. They employ
voiceover commentaries to give us
access to the artists’ innermost thoughts
as though only by this means can the
directors guarantee any progress in
giving cohesion to the ahistorical frag-
ments presented on screen.

The life of each artist is interpreted in
the light of a romantic pathos. Both
artists are depicted working compul-
sively, trying to capture on canvas
vaguely inspirational ideas which they

believe lie close to the centre of exist-
ence. Both are interpreted as re[...]cifix offered
by a monk — highly unlikely given the
period and the religious belief depicted
in his paintings. Instead he clings grimly
to the dagger with which he has cut
Ranuccio’s throat. On its blade is
stamped the apocryphal Latin tag:
‘Neither hope nor fear’. The emphasis
throughout jarman’s film is on the
wilful independence of the artist yet we
are intended to see the painter as a
martyr of art. \/\le are asked to make the
crossing from rebellion to pathos.

The biographical but unhistorical fact
which fuses Caravaggio’s life with his
art is the menage a trois he enjoys with
the doomed Ranuccio (Sean Bean) and
Lena the prostitute (Tilda Swinton).
According to jarman. the danger of bi-
sexual love in 16th century Rome equals
the painterly risks Caravaggio takes
with his commissions. Yet the motive for
the murder of Ranuccio is a dramatic
absurdity given the strong homo—erotic
emphasis of the film and the fact that
Lena is a two—dimensional character
who only achieves a presence when she’s
dead. The killing of Ranuccio is quite
arbitrary since now[...], but it is thematically neces-
sary to emphasise the self—mutilation, the
suffering for art, the theme of creative
pathos.

A list of films which attempt to reveal
the mysterious connection between the
artist’s life and his aesthetic expression
doesn’t add up to one ofthe great genres
of the cinema. Perhaps only Peter
Watkins’ film on Edvard Munch and
Tarkovsky’s about Andrei Ruble[...]tiny. jarman, like
many before him, believes that the inner
meaning of an artist’s life can be
equated with the artists output. The
paintings become the unmediated truth
about the human being who produced
them.

There are major p[...]essentially Philistine approach.
No artist, even the most iconoclastic,
works in a social vacuum. The art his-
torian Arthur C. Dante put it succinctly
in a recent article in the Times Literary
Supplement: “Such is the practice of art
in the \’Vest that consciousness of
participating in a[...]participating in
that history.” Far from being the Van
Gogh of the Late Renaissance, Cara-
vaggio in his work consciously returned
to the great tradition of Leonardo and
Michelangelo and[...]owledge.

Instead he makes up a contemporary
Slur on Caravaggio’s work by his first
biographe[...]

ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST: The painting brought to life

Schnabel-like messes of canvases that
Caravaggio
around in.
In many ways they are the culmina-
tion of the fallacy that Art may be inter-
preted as configu[...]These groups of urmaturally frozen
figures exist on the margins between
action (the cinema image) and concept
(the paintings). They are the desperate
attempt to bring into focus the contra-
dictory elements of a chaotic life which
supposedly finds significance only in the
authenticity of the creative act. They
exemplify, in their stillness, their cine-
matic unnaturalness, emblems of death
amid the complexities of life.

It is curious that almost none of the
major religious works are reproduced in
this way — the inclusions significantly
are two paintings depicting death, The
Death Of The Virgin and The Entombmml of
C/zrzst. Instead the tableaux recreate the
paintings about ‘the fruits’, the boys
who in a later development were dis-
guised[...]rs who could pass off illicit desire
as sanctity. The intention of the direc-
tor, in other words, is to reproduce
Caravaggio’s painterly interest in flesh.
The cinema cannot reproduce the seduc-
tiveness of the brush stroke. The
painter’s intention is to activate the sur-
face of the canvas but instead of this
kinetic quality whatja[...]s
is active life pretending to be frozen in
time. The movement from arrangement
to freeze frame is in exact reverse of the
artist’s painterly intention. This repro-
ducti[...]also incorporated by
Paul Cox in Vzrzcent exudes the mis-
judged kitsch of a waxwork.

_]arman’s fi[...]uperlative psycho-
logist, a conscious pursuer of the
internalised drama of human mortality
and the illumination of various forms of
redemption from[...]were all blended in
his artistic quest to expose the spiritual
behind the world of appearances. The
paintings are devalued by the film,
finished off and passed across the
counter to the avidly waiting aristocratic
purchasers like so ma[...]th is _]arman’s
restricted personal response to the artist
which, wandering between the assaults
of Ken Russell and the eccentric mise en
scene of Fellini, comes[...]

u

AM A z I N G

We don’t even know whether Amazing
Stories[...]p as a magazine after all.
Its salad days were in the twenties and
thirties. Under the editorship of its
founder, Hugo Gernsback, Amazing was
(in 1926) the first science-fiction maga-
zine, and its stories[...]echanics and
_ ripping yarns, not half as good as the
covers by Frank R. Paul. By the late
thirties, Gernsback gone, its staple had
become space opera — bug-eyed monsters
, (BEMS) and the like. Then and in later
years a succession of editors were wont to
~_ insist on as much beefcake action and
‘, cheesecake erotica as they could get in
order to keepvwhatever sales the mag still
commanded. Not a great set of credentia[...]azing Stories is a great title, much
juicier than The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction or even Astounding Science
Fiction, the industry leaders when s-f was
s-f in the fifties and sixties. So perhaps it
— is no wond[...]under Spielberg’s banner and
intended to rival the resurrected Twilight
Zone would have been given that name
instead of say, Weird Tales, which is the
magazine it actually seems to represent.

Thethe quality of what went on the
screen _.was not at fault — at least from
what one of us managed to see of it in the

US last year, and from the standard of the
three episodes gathered together in this
eponymou[...], no doubt about it.

_ _' (Footnote for pedants: the publicity

- people told us that this film was created

solely for the Australian market. That is,

it is_ a film which[...]it’s all right with you. You
will remember that the television Amazing
Stories was different from the magazine

. Amazing Stories. Now pay attention: the
television Amazing Stories was different
‘from the television Twilight Zone (both
from the original and the retread) in that
-.3 it! was a director’s, not a writer’s, show.
« In this, the television Amazing Stories was
. following the lead of the movie Twilight
Zone (still with us? there’ll be a test on this
‘ material on Tuesday). What was memor-
able in that movie was;[...]episode and Joe
Dante’s. fun with cartoons, not the cutesy

. stories upon which they were based.'
Well, thethe way the
hey‘-than the stories
_,_ visfoifithe way The

Equalizer is, not the way Rumpole is. And,

"let it be said right away,[...]ate
way of putting it. Rick Carter is credited
as the production designer on all three
episodes (presumably he was for the whole
series), and the look of the episodes, even
their noticeably high ‘productio[...]Robert Zemeckis and William Dear are
credited as the directors, others (including
the writers) may well be responsible for
the way these stories are.told. “Director’s
picture” is just a holdover from the bad
old days of auteurism, and we should be
spank[...]by you.)

__é’ir}t£5‘Kiii/1>t.oEA’figsT: The complicated - l_
viewing experience of Amazing S(orie_s_.

STO

The clearest example of what we mean
is Robert Zemeckis’ episode, the last one.
Along with a hoary Grand Guignol slap-
stick story about teenagers putting a curse
on their English teacher, there are a set of
images[...]me, Peter (Scott Coffey)
every fog-filled inch of the way. This gives
the rather routine story development just
enough tingle to sustain interest. You
keep on asking, “what is this wacko
person going to do[...]you know all too well what
has to happen next for the story to keep
going.

Then there is the level of technical

_>u

The second episode, which concerns a
mummy, or mummies, on the loose is
actually about this sort of technical
interest. Of the three, it generates the
most complicated viewing experience,
because we know the mummy is not a
mummy yet most of the gags are about
how absurd it is for a mummy to be[...]ng of twice,
two actors are credited with playing the
(false) mummy at different places in the
press kit: Brian Badley and Tom
Harrison. Since w[...]d, a
complicated viewing experience anyway.

Now, the episode we are supposed to
write about is Spielbe[...]shouldn’t say much more. There is no
doubt that the guy knows his craft, but
then, so does Paul McCar[...]iller.

Bill and Diane Routt

AMAZING STORIES: “The Mission": Directed by
Steven Spielberg. Producer:[...]Cast: Casey
Siemaszko (Jonathan), Kevin Costner (the Captain).
Kiefer Sutherland (Static). “Mummy. D[...]Joe Ann FogIe_
Cast: Torn Harrison/Brian Bradley (the Mummy).
Bronson Pinchot (the director). "Go To The Head Of
The Class ’: Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Producer:[...]110

minutes. USA. 1987.

ODOWN BY LAW

In one of the many capricious declara-
tions that the late Andy Warhol taught
us both to love and ignor[...]ould seem, took him to
his word and Jim Jarmusch, on the
evidence of this film, is probably one of
them. His Down By Law seems to be
little more than the tired product of the
union of what has been called ‘Image
Culture’[...]entire reason for being and
value is contained by the thought-
retarding phrase “it looks good”. There
are some glimmers of intelligence in the
film —— a nod to the sitcom, to screwball,
the desire to make comedy in general —
but not enou[...]would that get him at Venice or
Cannes?

Visually the film has a monumental,
granite~like stiffness, so much so that for
most of the time we might as well be
watching stills. Zack (T[...]ed out of his apartment by his girl-
friend, sits on an oil drum outside a
petrol station at night. He[...]o
convey dejection. But this is secondary,
for in the background there are some
really interesting shad[...]oed boots are
holding down a considerable part of the
scene too. It’s an “interesting image”,

1_.

HEAVY WAITSI Torn Waits. iailbird

the fodder of video clips, that’s the
beginning and the end of it. That it
might be some kind of existent[...]being, in fact, dull and empty.

When considering the involvement of
the two main actors, Tom Waits and
john Lurie, it is[...]as two heavy, street-wise dudes is flimsy
to say the least. That could be OK if
play were made of that[...]but
sadly they’re trying to do it for real and
the results are pretty painful.

Lurie plays jack, a slick, black-style
pimp. Early in thethe flashy rings on his fingers. His
manner is slightly edgy. All the signs are
there but it doesn’t add up to the
intended picture. It’s as though
jarmusch is completely satisfied by the
image, the ‘look’, alone. Ironically, the
sum effect ofthe scene is something close
to sensory deprivation, the combination
of obviousness and Lurie’s self-
re[...]capable only of poring

over his characters with the same dumb, >

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER ~ 47

these fights always look as if the[...]You expect
them to kiss, not hit each other.

In the prison cell they are joined by
the very gifted, very funny Italian
comedian Roberto[...]rases, he manages to communicate
while making all the expected but none-
theless enjoyable mistakes. There are
some good laughs and when he arrives
on the scene there is a sense of relief,
perhaps the film proper is going to start.
He does not, however, turn out to be the
energising catalyst we might have hoped
for. Not[...]job, but
everything around him is too, too dead.

The Benigni character, like many of
the plot moves and situations, draws on
the tradition of the screwball and the
sitcom. It is a tradition that is still alive
and popular. \’Vitness the many teen
movies that have worked with those
same conventions in recent years, like
The Sure T/Zing and Ferris Buellefx Day
Ofl, and hav[...]and truly hammy,
and they are at their worst when the film
goes for an ensemble gag as, for
example, when Benigni leads the others
into absurd song while they are in
prison. The good feeling and good
humour that emerges is just[...]ir homely
cousins at a wedding. It reminded me of
the awful attempts at humour in Dog: In
Space, a film which operates in a similar
sphere.

The problem seems to be an ambi-
valence or lack of r[...]s popu-
lar comedy, its figures and its cliches.
The film is probably not against them
but it defini[...]gnment. “It’s hip to dig trash” seems
to be the underlying attitude. But, of
course, to you and me, who attend and
enjoy the popular cinema old and new,
it’s not trash is it? Here jarmusch’s
arms—length handling of the material
shows us where he’s really at. It’s as
though he can’t really stomach the step
down into the muck of popular comedy
for fear that his film might be mistaken
for one itself (if only!). At the same time
not “digging trash” might throw it out
of the cool zone in the other direction,
towards highbrow.

Nlaybe I’m being too black and white
about it. Perhaps I should be consider-
ing its awkward, fruitless mix as some-
thing new in itself, but I can’t. The
bottom line is that the film gives very
little and, personally and artist[...]O SHE’S GOTTA
HAVE IT

Any film that includes the come—onthe natural light,
touch and taste of sensuous ardour[...]t American comedy popu-
lated by Brooklyn blacks, the movie em-
braces the sweaty flesh and itchy spirit of
sexual play as performed from
numerous narrative viewpoints around
the central co-ordinate of a young
modern black woman[...]g
(Tracy Camila johns).

Structurally, we’re in the hear—it-
from-all—sides realm of Kurosawa’s[...]ee is reported
to have seen just prior to writing the
script for She’x Gotta Have It. However,
the matter up for multi—prismatic
inspection here is not the single criminal
event of the Kurosawa film but the
expansive libidinal and arnatory nature
of the principal female protagonist.

This anchoring of the film’s nominal

concerns within contemporary feminine
experience is signalled from the start
when we’re treated to a poetic pre-
credi[...]Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watch-
ing God. The passage describes some-
thing of a recent gender[...]ber all those things they don’t
wish to forget. The dream is the truth.”

The impact of assertive selectivity
“now” available to the female
imaginary is further punctuated by the
film's first and final shots of Nola, enter-
ing and leaving the narrative by
emerging from and returning to her
b[...]ulti-
mately resemble personalised closure
joints on a variously panelled screen
which grants as much[...]sociates, especially a trio of
male lovers, as to the titular “she”. The
notion of who is dreaming whose truths
could become a more complex issue in
the film than the Hurston manifesto
may imply.

Stylistically, the mode often appears
to be a black and white street[...]each fictional participant
introduced addressing the camera
directly, preceded by a full name title.
Such devices, coupled with the film’s
cityspeak humour, might have
prompted some commentators to
trumpet the arrival of “a black Woody
Allen”, especially the Allen of Take The
Aloney Ana’ Run and Broadway Danny Rose.
Yet, a[...]ted
neuroses and hilariously obsessive
anxieties, the tone of She’: Gotta Have It
sounds more open, s[...]ggested that “gonna” be a per-
missible word, the idea doesn’t seem at
all unnatural.

Questions[...]or freakish.
Nola’s opening declaration is: “I wish to
clear my name. I consider myself
natural, whatever that means . . .” and
the scenario proceeds to chart how
numerous people, p[...]give his all to Nola (“What-
ever you wanna do, I’ll do, wherever
you wanna go, I’ll take you”). There’s
vain, body-building[...]pie (“Honey, my career is really
taking off and I want you by my side”).
And there’s Mars Blackmon (played by
the f1lm’s director—writer-editor, Spike
L[...]

The lovemaking scenes, in them-
selves, are sensation[...]perspiration half-
way down Jamie’s upper back; the
bobbing tilt of Nola’s smiling face,
riding in pleasure; the generous bulk of
Greer’s jockette-clad appendag[...]basically a home movie crew of
family and friends on tight funds (a
$23,000 shoot plus $150,000 proces[...]ing more?

Well, maybe Nola could have. Some-
how the film is so scrupulously adamant
about making her[...]beating heart and more a soft
centre around which the other charac-
ters, in particular that romantic t[...]Lee has made Nola such an agreeable
antithesis to the crazy nympho stereo-
type that he has wound up wi[...]fending off
emotional threats with a clipped, “I
don’t believe in regrets” — who stays
with us after the movie. Audiences will
tend to remember jamie’s[...]AZ)

Assassination (Hoyts)

No Surrender (Hoyts)

The Gate (AZ)

Dragnet (UIP)

Robocop (Village Roadsh[...]ildren’s Crusade
(Village Roadshow)

Masters Of The Universe (Hoyts)
The Rescuers (Greater Union)
Ernest Goes To Camp (Village
Roadshow)

Withnail & I (CEL)

Parting Glances (AZ)

October:

No Way Out[...]ne (Fox Columbia)

Joshua Then & Now (Seven Keys)
The Year My Voice Broke (Hoyts)
Hell Raiser (Village Roadshow)
The Boss’ Wife (Fox Columbia)
Good Morning Babylon (CEL)
jean De Florette (Greater
Union/Village Roadshow)

The Big Easy (Seven Keys)

Hotel Colonial (Filmpac)

X .

THE FIRST DEFINITIVE RECORD OF INDEPENDENT
WOMEN’S[...]I GREENHOUSE Make cheques payable to Greenhouse Pub[...]pages of thoroughly
researched material recording thethe significant role played by

women filmmakers. V[...]ANNA GRIEVE PHILIPPA HAWKER
JENI THORNLEY examine the wide range of issues confronted
by and still exis[...]ife Without Steve and Behind Closed Doors
— and the book includes a collection of statements by indiv[...]Road, $2395 each

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YOU MAY WAN[...]

is it taithtul? Is it true to the hook? Does it
matter? In the final part of his examination of
theories of lite[...]FARlANE
looks at notions of fidelity.

“capture the spirit of Dickens”? At every level from

newspaper reviews to longer essays in critical
anthologies, the offering of fidelity to the original novel as a
major criterion for judging the film adaptation is pervasive.
No critical line is in greater need of re-examination — and
devaluation.

On Being Faithful

Discussion of adaptation has been bedevilled by the fidelity
issue, no doubt ascribable in part to the novel’s coming first,
in part to the ingrained sense of literature’s greater respec-
tability in traditional critical circles. As long ago as the
mid—l940s James Agee used to complain of a debilitating
reverence even in such superior transpositions to the screen
as David Lean’s Great Expectations. It seemed to him that
the really serious-minded filmgoer’s idea of art w[...]d faithful adaptation of Adam Bede in sepia, with the
entire text read offscreen by Herbert Marshall”[...]ices such as Agee’s, querulously insisting that the cinema
make its own art and to hell with tasteful allegiance, have
generally cried in the wilderness.

Fidelity criticism depends on a notion of the text as
having, and rendering up to the (intelligent) reader, a single,
correct “meaning” which the filmmaker has either adhered
to or in some sense[...]often be a distinction between being faithful to the letter,
which the more sophisticated writer may suggest is no way
to ensure a “successful” adaptation, and to the “spirit” or
“essence” of the work. The latter is of course very much
more difficult to d[...]more
readings of any given novel, since, despite the stress on
fidelity, it is really able only to aim at reproducing his
reading of the original and to hope that it will coincide with
t[...]ers/viewers. Since such a coincidence
is unlikely the fidelity approach seems a doomed enterprise
and fidelity criticism unilluminating. That is, the critic who
quibbles at failures of fidelity is really saying no more than:
“This rendering of the original does not tally with mine in
these and these ways”.

Few writers on adaptation have specifically questioned the
possibility of fidelity; though some have claime[...]e it, they still regard it as a viable choice for the film-
maker and a criterion for the critic. Morris Beja is one
exception. In asking w[...]ks: “What relation-
ship should a film have to the original source? Should it be
‘faithful’? Can[...]g a novel, one is led to recall those efforts at

I s it really “]amesian”? Is it “true to Lawr[...]50 ~ NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

conclude our look at the relationship between writing an

fidelity to tim[...]ens’ London or
to Jane Austen’s village life, the result of which, so far from
ensuring fidelity to the text, is to produce a distracting
quaintness. What was a contemporary work for the author,
who could take a good deal relating to ti[...]ng for his
readers, has become a period piece for the filmmaker. As
early as l928, M. Willson Disher picked up the scent of this
false fidelity in writing about a version of Robinson Crusoe:
“Mr Wetherell [the director] went all the way to Tobago to
shoot the right kinds of creeks and caves, but he should have
travelled not westwards, but backwards, to reach ‘the
island’, and then he would have arrived with the right sort of
luggage”.3 Disher is not speaking against fidelity to the
original as such but against a misconstrued notio[...]recent example is Peter Bogdan-
ovich’s use of the medicinal baths sequence in his film of

l

:1: o

‘.'_ s

DREAMCHILD: A reflection on the work that inspired it

d cinema, and

Obscuring Other Issues

The insistence on fidelity has led to a suppression of
potentially more rewarding approaches to the phenomenon
of adaptation. Such an insistence tends to ignore the idea of
adaptation as an example of convergence among the arts,
perhaps a desirable, even an inevitable, pr[...]uction determinants which have
nothing to do with the novel but may be powerfully
influential upon the film. Awareness of such issues would be
more use[...]isticated approach, in relation to adaptation, to the idea
of the original novel as a “resource”. As Christophe[...]in this critical context [ie of intertextuality],
the issue is not whether the adapted film is faithful to its
source, but rather how the choice of a specific source and
how the approach to the source serve the film’s ideology?“
When, for instance, M-G-M[...]es Hilton’s 1941
bestseller, Random Harvest, in theThe
film belongs in a rich context created by notion[...]aptation and for its glossy “house
style”, by the genre of romantic melodrama (cf. Rebecca,
This Above All), and by the idea of the star vehicle. Hilton’s
popular but, in truth, undistinguished romance is but one

element of the film’s intertextuality. For audiences (and ‘

Random Harvest was the second biggest box-office hit in
war-time Britain), the drawcard was far more likely to have
been Greer G[...]oposed strategies potentially more
rewarding than the fidelity test for considering adaptations,
strat[...]ek to categorise adaptations so that
fidelity to the original loses some of its privileged position.
G[...]gests three possible categories which
are open to the filmmaker and to the critic assessing his
adaptation: he calls these (a) zransposzfion “in which a novel
is given directly on the screen with a minimum of apparent
interference”[...]t . . , when there has been a different intention on the
part of the filmmaker, rather than infidelity or outright
v[...]ust represent a fairly
considerable departure for the sake of making another work
of art”.3 The critic, he implies, will need to understand
which kind of adaptation he is dealing with if his
commentary on an individual film is to be valuable. Dudley
Andrew also reduces the modes of relation between the film
and its source novel to three, which correspond roughly (but
in reverse order of adherence to the original) to Wagner’s
categories: “Borrowing,[...]Klein and Gillian Parker:
first, “fidelity to the main thrust of the narrative”, second,
the approach which “retains the core of the structure ofthe
narrative while significantly reinterpreting or, in some cases,
deconstructing the source text”; and, third, regarding “the
source merely as raw material, as simply the occasion for an
original work”.1° The parallel with Wagner’s categories is

cl[...]

Trying Again

In establishing the kind of relation a film might bear to the
novel it draws on, it is worth distinguishing between that
which ca[...]ially, narrative) and that which, being dependent on
different signifying systems, cannot be transferred
(essentially, enunciation). The distinction is not as boldly
simple as the previous sentence makes it sound, but it is
simpl[...]ued in studies of adaptation.

Narrative is still the best place to start in dealing with
adaptation si[...]usceptible to
objective statements about them (“The convict seizes Pip”)
and (b) not intransigently[...]Roland Barthes’ 1966
essay, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narra-
tives”,“ with i[...]”, offers a valuable
starting point for sifting the transferable from thethe novel, and it is compar-
atively straight-forward[...]lm has sought to
transfer key narrative elements. The film version of a novel
may retain all the major cardinal functions of a novel, all its
chie[...]ro— and macro-levels of
articulation, set up in the viewer acquainted with the novel
quite different responses. The extent to which this is so can
be determined by how far the filmmaker has sought to create
his own work in t[...]ot possible.
He can, of course, put his own stamp on the work by
omitting or re-ordering those narrative e[...]point
is that, even if he has chosen to adhere to the novel in these
respects, he can still make a film[...]t affective and/or intellectual experience. It is the
“integrational functions” or “indices”, w[...]than operations, that
lead to a consideration of the more complex relations
between a film and the novel it is based on: that is, at the
level of enunciation.

Here, the full force of the distinctions between two
different signifying systems will be felt. The novel draws on
a wholly verbal sign system, the film variously, and
sometimes simultaneously, on visual, aural and verbal
signifiers. In the study of adaptation, a rigorous examination
of the ways in which the cinematic codes (eg, those to do
with editing, wi[...]nt)
and those extra-cinematic codes integrated in the mise-en-
scene (eg, costume, setting, cultural codes generally) and on
the soundtrack are deployed may provide insight into how
far and by what means the filmmaker has sought equivalents
for the novel’s purely verbal signs. And, more importan[...]lity or analogy or commentary, it is here — in

the realm of cinema itself — that the f1lmmaker’s
achievement as an adaptor is to be gauged.
NOTES

1. Agee On Film, McDowell, Oblonsky, New York, 1958, p216.
2[...]3. M. Willson Disher, “Classics into Films”, The Fortnightly Review,
Vol 124 (New Series), Dec 192[...]1, Winter, 1973/74, p14.

5. Christopher Orr, “The Discourse on Adaptation”, Wide Angle, Vol 6,
No 2, l984, p72.

6. Geoffrey Wagner, The Novel And The Cinema, Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, New[...]bz'd., p224.

. 1bid., p226.

. Dudley Andrew, “The Well-Worn Muse: Adaptation in Film
History and Th[...]10.

10. Michael Klein and Gillian Parker (eds.), The English Novel and the

Movies, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., N[...]

In the last issue, SAM RUHDIE wrote about the

debate in Italian cinema on the tyranny of the

script. Here, he looks at Pasolini’s theoretical
work on the nature of the screenplay.

asolini’s theoretical writings on theon it. On the other hand, his life reads like a
novel about pain and the flesh. “In the winter of 1949 I fled
with my mother to Rome, as if in a novel. The period in
Friuli was over.”

His death was utte[...]candal. He picked up
a young boy late at night at the Rome Stazione Termini, as
he did most nights. He bought him some food then took him
to the Roman sub—proletarian periphery of Ostia to make
love. The place was deserted, squalid. Pasolini was vicious[...]r Ragazzi Di Vita, or a scene from
Accaztone with the peculiar mix of the corrupt and the
sacred, the most miserable death redeemed by sacrifice. To
s[...]f he had willed it.

Pasolini wrote a short essay on the film script in l965: La
sceneggiatura come “szruttura che vuol essere altra szruttura”
(The script as “structure that wants to be another struc-
ture”). The essay concerns the median role of the script
facing in two directions, towards literature, toward film,
toward the word, toward the image. But the writing has a
peculiar quality of longing and desire even beyond the
precise shift in Pasolini’s own work/life from poetry and the
novel to the cinema, from one language to another. It is the
intensity of the writing rather more than the content of the
thought that arrests the attention. In fact, the thought is not
especially interesting, and it is even banal. For Pasolini the
fascinating aspect of the script was its in-between, neither
here nor there[...]e another. It
is at this point, of movement, that the writing becomes
exciting.

In June, 1965, around the time the script article was
written, Pasolini gave a paper on ‘The cinema of poetry’ at
an important cinema and semiotics conference at the Pesaro
Film Festival, along with Roland Barthes,[...]from linguistics and sought thereby to delineate the
particular ‘language’ of film.

Paso1ini’s[...]ientific’, but rather polemical and political. The written
and spoken language, the language of graphemes, monemes
and phonemes was h[...]ed and, to
stretch a point, rationalist and male. On the other hand, for

PASOLINI: His death was like a scene from Accattone

Pasolini the cinema had no language, no ‘codes’ in the sense
that language proper did, or if it did, that language was
made up directly from the ‘real’; its appeal was to something
less rational, more primitive than language — the gestural,
the corporeal, the regressive, the flesh. The basis of the
cinema rested in the irrational, the pre-conscious — qualities
Pasolini remarked as decadent. The move toward the
cinema was toward the less coded, the more sensuous, but
also toward the maternal — the mother whom he fled with
to Rome as in a novel, as in a dream. The ‘movement’ of the
script from language to images, from the coded to the
stylistic, the institutional to the personal, was a move away
from what was known and[...]irrationalism, a scandal of images
opening up at the heart of the word.

In his paper on the cinema of poetry at Pesaro, one of the
filmmakers he praised was Antonioni. Tonino Guerr[...]twriter for most ofAntonioni’s films, described the
scripting process for Antonioni as a falling away of
language. At first the script was filled with language: every-
thing was described, everything said, all thought dialogised.
As the weeks passed, very slowly, word by word, the
language came away; the final script was practically emptied
of language, a mere sketch, giving the impression, if read,
Guerra noted, of bareness and squalor.

In this period of the early to mid-19605 the main pro-
tagonists of Antonioni’s films, and[...]hy, were women with neither power of position
nor the power of intellectual profession and possession.[...]readily adjust to uncer-
tainties, to change, to the unknown — they were at home
with the fluctuating and the tenuous. And they had another
quality too that the men seemed to lack: they liked very
much t[...]

O MUYA WUDD

My instinctive respo[...]question, “Is that a
criticism?”. Or perhaps I have
misunderstood. In this industry,
choosing to be a writer is often
perceived to be the lesser
alternative. And in a very varied
career t[...]g into
space is not an activity that will
advance the work, or the fortunes
of, say, a producer, or producer’s
ass[...]read — too much.

Writing in all its forms, and the
working methods and the lives of
writers, have been a lifetime
interest. Then there’s the story
teller on the bus seat. In spare
and simple language, the events
and the participants are revealed,
without elaboration or
explanation. The role ofthe
writer for film, particularly, and
for television is, to me, to be such
a story teller.