Cinema Papers no. 37 April 1982 (2024)

OCR

recorder has completed the
film/Video circle. Film conversion to tape has
b[...]ited for a quality tape—to—film conversion.

The major feature of the CTR—3 is the
high resolution three—tube display system with
its associated dichroic optics. This assures the
elimination of the raster line structure without
any sacrifice to resolution. When this is
combined with the quality of Eastmancolor
film from Kodak, the color saturation and
color balance are perfect.

The impact of all this is the coming
together of the film and video laboratories.
Now a job can be shot on film, have all the
optical and titles done on tape and be released
on film.

The potential is unlimited and the time
saving enormous. At Videolab we are proud
to be the first to introduce it to Australia.”

Peter Bowlas;
General Manager, Videolab.
(A Division of the Colorfilm Group)

{ Kodak Motion Picture[...]

. . . You’

.,.I ‘T I iii‘ L_ / A couple of years ago
, -- V I ';-I ' the wctorian Film Corporation opened
the Melbourne Film Studio.
To begin with, it was not[...]But it has already seen
nearly12 million dollars in production pass

through its doors.[...]e, but what a relief to
be able to work free from the weather, flight paths
and the neighbourhood dog.

fime saved.

Money saved.

A[...]Burstall or Geoff Burrowes.

On April ’| 1982, the \/EC. will open Phase 2.
Together with the existing sound stage, it will be
the best plug—in production complex in this oountry.

Dressing rooms, producers offices, wardrobe,
change rooms, stars’ suites, s[...]ully equipped kitchen where your caterer can
have the moming tea scones hot before you've
rolled the first shot.

The Wctorian Film Corporation underwrites this
projec[...]that won't break
your budget. Book early

before the new financial year scramble.
Call the Wctorian Film Corporation on

(03) 329 703[...]

Meet tomorrow's deadlin[...]

New Gevacolor 682 appreciated as a work of art in itself. AG FAG EVAERT L, M I-I-ED

negative Camer[...]Head Office, P. O. Box 48,
This film passes even the can be processed without any of the Nunawading, VIC. 3131.

toughest of tests with flying colours problems createdrby climatic Melbourne 878 8000,

(if you’ll forgive the pun), conditions. And its compatible with Sydney[...]ne 3916833

reproducing skin tones to perfection. the process employed by most major Adelaide 42[...]

Viiegiczally-placed office in Los Angeles.

So, if you want to evelop or make a movie, now’s the right time to get in touch

with us.

New South Wales Film Corporation
45 Macq uarie Street. Sydney. Australia 2000
Telephone (02) 27 5575 Telex FILCOR AA23298

is proud to have been associated with the production of

NOWY RIVE

' A.

TH

R H Tolley & Gardner Pty Ltd
Insurance Brokers to the Film and Entertainment Industry

Melbourne[...]

Features

The Quarter
Obituary

Fred Harden
Production Survey[...]Reds
Keith Connolly
Starstruck
Debi Enker
Priest of Love
John Tittensor
Duet for Four
Sam Rohdie
Body Heat
Dave Nash
Best of Friends
Jim Murphy

Rich and Famous
Brian McFar|a[...]Book Reviews

Government and Film

Sam Rohdie
Recent Releases
Reds Merv Binns
Review: 164

Managing Editor: Scott Murray. Associate Ed[...]117

131
147

149
153
173
178

163
164

Women in Drama
Meg Stewart: 136

166
167
169
170
171

171

175

175

Heatwave
Review: 163

Cinema Papers is produced with financial assistance from the Australian Film Commission.
Articles represent the views of their authors and not necessarily those of the editors. While every
care is taken with manuscripts and materials supplied for this magazine. neither the Editors nor
the Publishers accept any liability for loss or damage which may arise. This magazine may not be
reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of the copyright owner. Cinema Papers is
published every[...]fice, 644 Victoria St, North
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3051. Telephone: (03) 329 5983.

© Copyright Ci[...]April 1982.

Cover): Jo Kennedy as Jackie Mullens in Gillian Armstrong's Starstruck (see review
p.165 .

CINEMA PAPERS April - 107

The Australian Writers’ Guild’s 15th
Annual Awgie Awards, sponsored by
Ampol, were announced on March 4 in
Adelaide. Peter Welch reports:

The awards were presented by the
State Minister for the Arts, Murray Hill,
and the guest of honor, Professor
Manning Clark, A.C., to writers in 13
categories, with the winner for an Origi-
nal Work for the Stage. Flon Elisha for
Einstein, also winning the major Awgie
Award for Outstanding Work.

The awards were announced after
the dinner in the opulent Victorian sur-
roundings of Edmund Wright House
with the Musica de Camera Quartet
(harpsichord, two recorders and viola
da gamba) playing baroque music
throughout the evening.

Master of ceremonies was Adelaide
playwright Rob George, whose latest
work, Percy and Rose, centred on the
relationship of Australian composer
Percy Grainger and his mother,
starring Dennis Olsen and Daphne
Grey, was premiered at the 1982
Adelaide Festival of Arts.

Names of the winners in each cate-
gory, together with brief biographical
details and some of their other writing
credits (where known), follow:

Original Work for the Stage and winner
of the major Awgie Award: Ron
Elisha, Einstein.

Einstein is Ron's second produced
play. It was presented by the Mel-
bourne Theatre Company in 1981 and
has just completed a season at the

Category:

Children's Roger Dunn
Adaptation

Doc[...]Himself
Monkey Grip

John Duigan

Seymour Centre in Sydney. Seasons of
Einstein have also been licensed to
Queensland, A.C.T., Western Aus-
tralia, New Zealand and the Lyric
Theatre, London. Faber and Faber
(London) have made an offer to publish
the play.

Ron E|isha’s other produced play
was In Duty Bound, presented by the
Melbourne Theatre Company in two
seasons in 1979-80.

Ron Elisha was born in Israel in 1951
and emigrated to Australia with his
family in 1953. He graduated in medi-
cine from Melbourne University in
1975, completed his residency in
Sydney and is now practising in
Melbourne. His interest in writing dates
from 1967.

Awards Fracas

IIIIIIII[...]IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Major changes to the Australian Film
Awards were recently announced by
the organizing body, the Australian
Film Institute. The industry has not ac-
cepted them quietly. Scott Murray
reports:

The AFI could have had little idea
what shock waves it would send
through the film industry with its
announcement of the rules governing
the 1982 Awards. The controversy
centres on changes to the judging of
feature film entries by the introduction
of a pre-selection jury.

The Issues

In 1976, the then executive director
David Roe abandoned the long-held

So You're Getting a
Divorce

No Names No Pack
Drill

Two Men Running

The Sullivan;
(episodes 907/8)

Winter oi Our
Dreams

jury system in preference for industry
voting. All eligible features were
screened in Melbourne, Sydney and
Adelaide (and in later years in Perth,
Brisbane and Hobart) and accredited
film professionals viewed each film
before voting in the category or cate-
gories of their expertise (e.g.. editing or
sound). They also voted with AF!
members (full and associate) for the
Best Film Award.

Some years later, the procedure was
changed and all voters had to be
members of the AFI, which now has an
open membership.

This year, with no forewarning, the
judging system was changed again.
Due to what the AF! feared would be an
avalanche of entries (35 being the
figure quoted), it decided to pre-select
the features down to a “manageable”
level. The proposal was that a "com-
mittee of eminent film industry profes-
sionals" select four "nominations" in
each of 13 categories. which would
then be voted on by al[...]bers. This raised several queries:
(i) Four films in 13 categories means

that up to 52 different films could
be pre-selected (assuming that
number of films was ever pro-
duced in one year). So, such a
pre-selection procedure does not
in itself mean the final number of
films up for voting will be less than
the number of features entered. Of
course, some films may be of such
a low standard that almost
anybody would pre-select them
out. But what if one of those films
had the best sound editing in
years: the jury would be obliged to
nominate that film for c[...]Has written documentaries for
several years with the
Tasmanian Film Corporation
and Film Australia. Writing Pals,
a children's television series for
the TFC.

Dorothy Hewitt Golden Valley Chapel Perilous. Man from
Mukinupin. Her latest play is in
the Perth Festival.

Bob Herbet

Elizabeth Jolley

Adapted from his stage play
which was produced by the
Sydney Theatre Company in
1980.

A radio writer for many years.
Among her other radio credits
are: Night Fleport, The
Performance. Shepard on the
Roof and Woman in a
Lampshade.

David was co-writer of the
feature film Breaker Moran!
and directed the television
series A Town Like Alice.

Luis Bayonas Bellamy
(episode 26)

Eleanor Witcombe

Writer of screenplays for My
Brilliant Career and The
Getting of Wisdom, plus the
television series Water Under
the Bridge.

Previous writing credits include
Case, a feature for Film
Australia, plus Sporting
Chance and cold Comfort for
televi[...]uited, starring Steve
Speers.

Wrote and directed the feature
film Month to Mouth, directed
Dimboola and has just finished
directing the feature Far East,
starring Bryan Brown.

Monte Miller Award tor an Unproduced Script by an Associate of the Guild: Shared by Julia Britton for her stage play[...]and Christopher Kennedy for his original teleplay The End of the Course.

(iii) There is also the problem, seen at
many past Awards, of landsliding
one film at the expense of others.
Because one film is so superior to
the rest in many ways, there is a
tendency among voters — and
critics — to assume it is superior
in all ways. Thus a film like
Breaker Morant (in 1980) or Galil-
poli (in 1981), however deser-
vedly, sweeps the pool. This has
happened in open voting, and it is
conceivable it could happen even
more so in pre-selection —
especially if a limit is set.

(iv) Perhaps most important, how-
ever, is the problem ofthe old film
board argument: if a person is
talented[...]judgments.
Even if a jury can be found, there
is the question of prejudice. Will it
favor mainstream commercial
ci[...]ures?
Would, for instance, last year's
Wrong Side of the Road make it
past a pre-selection jury? If it
didn't, it would be the AFl's —- and
the industry's — loss, to say
nothing of the filmmaker's.

In short, the arguments against a
pre-selection seem overwhelming. The
only argument in its defence is that the
number of films to be screened will be
unmanageable. But it is a false
argument.

The closing date for finished prints
is, as of writing, May 21. This was the
date all producers and industry people
have been working to, and the one on
the application forms.

The number of films eligible for entry
appears to be about 28. Now, at least
five of these will be in release around
screening time, or have had a major
release (three weeks or more). This
means the maximum number of films
needing a screening is 23. In 1977, the
AFI showed 20 films.‘ Screening three
more film[...]geable exercise.

Also, not showing films already in
release, and which are easily viewable,
is a needed change in regulations. At
present, too many AFI members wait
until the Awards screenings before
seeing a film (free). Su[...]bers should be encouraged to see
Australian films in their correct environ-
ment — at a cinema with a paying
audience.

The Furore

When the 1982 application forms
were mailed and news of the changes
reached the industry, there was a
sudden, almost violent, reaction..Three
days later, on March 3, at a meeting of

Continued on p. I 92

1. Two were later withdraw[...]IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

The untimely death of assistant
director Chris Maudson, 36, from a
brain tumor saddened the Australian
feature film industry. Chris had worked
on some 12 feature films‘ in the
capacity of assistant director, special-
izing in the difficult area of organizing
actors for their appearance before the
cameras. His special quality was to give
actors the feeling that he cared about
them as people, and t[...]ut them at ease
as they prepared to appear before the
cameras.

Chris was the link between the often
slow progress on the set and the impa-
tient performers psyched up and ready
to do[...]en getting irritable
about waiting. But Chris was the kind of
person with whom it was very difficult to
get irr[...]he brought news
to so many makeshift green rooms of
yet more delays, even the emotional
grandstanders found it hard to vent
their spleen on him and the production
he represented.

Chris was likewise given the often
onerous task of ringing the production
office and giving producers and
production managers the news that the
day’s shooting was going into over-
time. His voice had a slight stammer, a
disarming weapon that brought the
news about the complicated shot that
was just about to be completed and the
couple of quick close-ups to follow up
in no time at all and wrap up the day.
Even when you knew he was talking
about thre[...]as a film buff with an overall
love for all types of films and a particu-
Iar passion for Jean-Luc God[...]nnan's attic,
which houses a legendary collection of
videos, and emerged with films starring
Judy Holl[...]le
Lombard, and went on to give me plot
summaries of the likes of Easy Living
and Born Yesterday.

The last job Chris worked on was
casting for the forthcoming television
series on the Whitlam years. His know-
ledge of actors and cinema gave Chris
the perfect qualifications for the job of
casting, and I believe that had he lived
Chris would have found this to be his
perfect position in the film industry.

About 400 people attended Chris’

1. Chris Maudson‘s credits: The Tres-
passers, Newsfront, A Town Like Alice,
Long[...]k,
Hoodwink, Fighting Back, Touch and Go.
Barney, The Chain Reaction and Stir.

funeral. The line-up included directors
Phil Noyce, Gill Armst[...]illiams and Melody
Cooper.

Bryan Brown delivered the funeral
oration, which began:

"In December 1976, I met Chris
Maudson and Richard Brennan, and
was introduced to 161 Victoria St.
Over the next five years, I partici-
pated in countless discussions,
mostly about film, around a certain
round table in their kitchen. Many
people here today, I know, share a
similar experience.

“The hospitality and camaraderie
existing at Chris and[...]ss director
through a bad stretch.

“To walk up the stairs and be
faced by Chris sitting at the table
always beaming and saying ‘Hi’
made you sure there was at least one
person in this world who was glad to
see you and he always was. His
enthusiasm to be around people
never waned."

On the set of Far East, work stopped
and cast and crew stood on the roof of
the ageing Supreme Studios where
associate producer J[...]ce for Chris.

I believe Chris Maudson maintained
the balance between actors and tech-
nicians better than anyone else in the
industry. I appreciate the contribution
that he made to my three features and I
wish so much that we had him on the
next one. Chris is survived by his 10-
year-old daughter Samantha, who has

appeared in many of the films he
""°"‘°d °”~ — David Elfick
Bill Bain

For many, Upstairs, Downstairs and
The Duchess of Duke Street typify
excellence in British television drama.
The leading director for both series was
Bill Bain, an Australian. On February
22, Bain died of cancer in London.

Trained as a school teacher, Bain
soon turned to acting and then direc-
tion at the Australian Broadcasting
Commission, where he handled child-
ren's programs, sheep dog trials and

The Quarter

A R Y

the occasional light drama. in 1962, he
moved to Britain where he was invited
to direct an episode of Harpers W1 for
ATV. This was followed by episodes of
The Avengers, csllan, Public Eye, The
Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Enemy
at the Door.

He had also directed the feature
What Became of Jack and Jill and
several television plays, including The
Importance of Being Earnest, Pretty
Polly, The Listener and Fathsr’s Help.

Bain returned briefly to Australia in
1978 to work at the Australian Film and
Television School. His role was that of
guiding 12 third-year students through
their television projects. In an inter-
view in Cinema Papers‘ he said:

"One of the nice things about the
AFTS is that all the people I know in
the industry would have liked to
come here. We all ha[...]fire and are still pretending we know
more about the technical side than
we do. So I think that the more of us
who can make a contribution to this
place the better.

“Maybe I am idealistic, but I came

out gladly to do this job. I believe in

the potential talent this country has,
though what it[...]lace like this
where people can make mistakes on

the quiet and not have them thrown .

up on the television or film screen for

all of us to think, ‘Jesus, isn't that
awful.’ "

Bill Bain was unquestionably one of
the world's finest television directors.
His episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs
and Callan stand with the best tele-
vision drama ever produced.

One of the pleasures, in fact. of a
series like Upstairs, Downstairs was
picking whether a particular episode
was directed by Bill Bain. If the show
evoked genuine emotion without being
sentimental, if it managed to turn the
simplest linking scenes into magically-
charged moments, then Bain was
probably the director.

“One's concern is always to find the
reality of a script, to sniff out what the
dangers are likely to be. One must
ride very care[...]o go soggy on you . . .
“It is also a caring on the part of the
people who are working on a
program. If you do so[...]if you can
get a caringness going — a love for
the thing itself — then you will trans-
mit some of that feeling."

Bill Bain transmitted that love. His
presence in world filmmaking will be

greatly missed.[...]

I just started writing down
sketches of characters I knew from
this pub where my mother u[...]most reveal themselves with their
style and form of speech. So I jot
down things people say, and they
lay the seed for the scenes.

Once I have the rough arch-
itecture for a few scenes, I begin to
evolve a plot to accommodate the

Main photograph: Jo Kennedy as Jackie
Mullens[...]cLean and director Gillian Armstrong
make some on-the-spot script alterations.

Scott Murray talks[...]ing a flat with
someone you d0n’t like.

I see the character, then I hear
the character, and what I hear is the
spur to write. Most things are funny
simply because a particular person
says them. Think of Marilyn
Monroe: she walks into a ship’s
cabin in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
and says, “Look — ro[...]ly
funny, but, when she says it, it’s a
scream. In fact, it was so right for
her that Billy Wilder used a varia-
tion of the same gag in Some Like
It Hot.

CINEMA PAPERS April — 111

Inspiration comes from the
oddest quarters. One night in
London I went to a perfect produc-
tion of Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard
at the Riverside and he immed-
iately becamc my favorite[...]losing their cherry
orchard and their entire way of life
reminded me of the real pub people
I knew. They lost their pub, and the
loss of true location left them
ghost-like.

I can remember when the first
Australian films came out in
London, somebody said to me,
“The thing about you Australians is
you should stick t[...]generalization, but I
do think there is a strain of Aus-
tralian thinking which leans
towards morbidity. That’s okay,
but it’s often expressed in a preten-
tious, middle-class way — Toorak
‘quality’ culture at one end, Carlton
‘alternative’ at the other.

Perhaps our sense of isolation
gives us a morbid strain, but the
work seldom has the patches of
levity the Russians bring to their
morbid books or plays — you
know, that terrific manic quality.
In our case there has been too much
striving for intellectual superiority,
and it has produced a lot of dull,
boring works — more so in theatre
than in film.

One film that does really hit its
mark on[...]arts, which is bleak and sad, but
funny! That’s the thing: whenever
tragic things are happening in life,
something zany is usually
happening simulta[...]n black
comedy.

Given that many Australian films of
the early 1970s were comedies, why
did they stop being made? “Star-
struck” is the first comic film in a
while, except for “The Club” . . .

Well, to me, Don’s Party is one
of the best Australian films ever. In
that one David Williamson was
funny and serious.

Is comic writing in Australia under-
valued?

Yes, because of the pretensions I
have been banging on about. The
Australian public has a highly
developed sense ofcomedy. We are
the only country which takes it
from all over the world, on tele-
vision. And yet the powers which
run entertainment (and that
includes the government) accord it
the kind of status you would give
junk food.

It happens in every arm of the
media. A great Aussie writer, Ross
Campbell, just died. He labored for
many years doing columns for the
Packer press. He wrote real things,
like the humiliation a father feels
when his kiddie says, “Daddy, why
doesn’t our fridge have a light in it
like everyone else’s?” And, of
course, all those middle-brows

112 -— April CINEMA PAPERS

aspiring to seriousness just don’t
have the brains to attach value to
real talent like that. It doesn’t hide
behind a cause, but has the con-
fidence to be itself; it isn’t phoney.

But comedy will once again gain
prestige, as it had in the 1930s, with
columnists like Dorothy Parker
and Robert Benchley in journal-
ism, and Ben Hecht and Billy
Wilder in film. They were very friv-
olous but they dealt w[...]y regarded — and still
are.

We are getting out of that post-
World War 2 period when comedy,
and it happened here also, became a
very lowly-prized commodity. The
1970s brought back more apprecia-
tion for the craftsman. I’m glad.
Australia has a bit of money in
the kitty, so it tried to buy ‘art’ and
‘culture’, which is a prime example
of a middle class getting culture-
obsessed and gett[...]t is a very rare work. I suppose
Alvin Purple and the early comedies
were sort of awful; there was
some great stuff in the Barry
McKenzie films, but it was more
spot burlesque comedy. And the
public loved them.

I respect the real public, not the
culture vultures, because they dare
to like what they really like, which
is more than you can say for a lot of
critics.

We should value comedy. Our
most rememb[...]t an arts grant
system that fostered him, was it? In
developing talent, the culture

Australians seem compelled to
act out the role of ‘the artist’;
French-style. And the industry
itself hangs naive labels. For
instance,[...]truck? She is far too serious. She
could not have the sense of humor
to do Starstruck.” Can’t you be
serious and have a sense of humor
too — or even a sense of comedy?
People could not comprehend that
a woman (and I emphasise the sex)

O

S wphen Maelean

only $5 for a ticket. People in the
industry are concerned with their
future . . .

I[...]you are still rolling it, so
why be conservative? The basic
principle of rolling it is against that.
And as for being conc[...]al or
heightened quality about it, par-
ticularly in the pub scenes, which are
perhaps closer to most people’s
sense of reality than the pop culture
scenes. Was that the sort of style
you were going for?

Yes. That sub-plot abo[...]bout a dis-
appearing species. I am talking
about the Australians who had a
sniff of the Depression. They have a

,_p

,4)‘: ~.

.
.,- .[...]p right: Robbie and Jackie sing “Body and
Soul" in the Harbour View Hotel. Righr:
Angus, in the schoolroom, sings “Starsrruck".
Above: Jackie leads Angus, disguised as a
kangaroo to hide his youth, to the Lizard
Lounge. Starstruck.

could be serious about her work
and have a sense of humor.

As for myself, I have suffered the
reverse of that; because I might
crack a few gags wherever I[...]n think I’m not serious
about my work. That’s the Aus-
tralian culture climate, love. _

I find the Australian public is far
more adventurous than the people
who develop talent.

But the public has less at risk -

different point of view to anyone
born 10 years later. They are basi-
cally a working people with a
special kind of wit and a theat-
ricality about them which is ver[...]ey
are disappearing; we have been so
colonized by the U.S.

Starstruck is an odd form of
Americana syphoned through the
caustic Australian eye. Star-
struck’s form was created by many
American films before it. It is the
type of film which falls somewhere
between reality and pantomime.

A lot of people go to films
expecting them to represent re[...]her than real life. And Gill
Armstrong has struck the right note
here, whereby the people are
heightened, are leaning towards
caricature, but nevertheless
demand to be taken seriously. The
characters disengage themselves
from their backgrounds.

I relate Edna Everage to this, the
fine line between character and
caricature. Edna started out as a
satirical character within the
dramatic framework of Moonee
Ponds. As the years went by, people
began to think of Edna as a real
person.

This is tied to the sense of reality
Australian women bring to trans-
vestism.[...]ing 20 years for a
basically female audience from the
suburbs, and they go and watch
these guys sort of ridicule
femininity.

Patrick White wrote in his
memoirs that Australian women
are far more interesting than Aus-
tralian men because of this male
element in their make-up. He wrote
that Australian men do not possess
a corresponding feminine element
in their make—up, and are con-
sequently less interesting.

White went on to despair about a
certain type of woman who stifles
that wonderful feminine part to ape
the worst kind of male qualities.
They are often very witty and put
people in their places with their
tongues — women who hav[...]strong and tough, like
Pearl (Margo Lee) who runs the
pub in Starstruck. Edna is an
extreme of that type —— “Aus-
tra1ia’s answer to the Jewish
momma”, as Barry Humphries
billed himself in New York.

Actually, I found Pearl a rather sad,
almost tragic, figure . . .

Sad?

Look at the way she is used by Lou
(Dennis Miller) . . .

I c[...]n given that, she still has to
accept him robbing the safe . . .

Oh, she is not prepared to accept
that at all. That just happened in a
soap opera plot twist —- though I
actually grafted that in from a real-
life memory. I think Australian
women are used to covering for
men, in one way or another.

The heightened realism of the pop
sequences touches on styles used in
pop clips: for example, the ‘I Don’t
Like Mondays’ clip of The Boom-
town Rats. Was that a deliberate
influence?

The Starstruck theme song takes
place in a schoolroom because
Angus (Ross O’Donovan) goes to
school and much of the potential
audience will, too. The schoolroom
as a setting for pop might seem an
overworked location, but it is all
relative to the amount of time kids

- actually have to spend in them.

Is there a risk that an audience will
bring to “Starstruck” the expecta-
tion of being thrilled in the way, say,
a~Devo clip thrills them?

Those thrill[...]ng. You
can use cutting to communicate
rhythm for the length of a clip, but
you have to use it sparingly in a
feature because it’s tiring — which
is what Gill has done. I think she’s
right.

But I think any of those songs
could lift from the film. This is how
I think an audience responds to film
clips of musicals on television.
First, they get to like the song.
Second, they get to like someone in
the clip. They get to thinking about
maybe buying the record. Then
they want to go to Grease or what-
ever so they can see John and Olivia
do the songs bigger and louder than
on television.

So, with “Starstruck”, you have to
get people hooked on the music
first . . .

Absolutely. We have to get that

music out there and expose people
to the clips. Their response to the

CINEMA PAPERS April — I13

How involved were you in the choice
of musical numbers? Did you include
directives in the script?

Instinct told me where to place
them. When the songs were
obviously necessary to the plot, I
wrote them in first go. But I also
went over the script afterwards and
wrote in “song” in the sections
which would gain energy from the
mere infusion of a song. Even a
dramatic script can be likened to a
popular song in structure: there is
the opening chorus, the bridge, the
melody, the climax. It is the bridge
that most often lets a song down —
and a[...]gh. Some-
body is talking, then they turn to
sing in another voice, which always
worried me and sent me running for
the popcorn. The only one like that
which really works is The Band-
wagon, largely because of the con-
ception of writers Adolf Green and
Betty Comden.

A Star Is Born was the first
musical I believed. Every musical
number ha[...]context. So at first I put Star-
struck’s songs in a strictly realistic
context, such as a band perf[...]“No, let’s
just do what we feel like.” Take the
scene in the bar where Jackie (Jo
Kennedy) just starts singing “It’s
Not Enough”. I had always wanted
a ballad in the bar, because Ijust
loved it when Judy Garland was
jamming with the musos in her
film, and the James Mason charac-
ter comes in and sees her. That was
realistic, whereas Gill has our girl
start singing. I think it works well,
in the end.

Did “A Star Is Born” influence the
structure of the film?

It would be great if Jackie
walked up and[...]Norman Main.” No, I do not think
it influenced the structure, just the
feeling.

I took the advice that writers get:
if you want to write a book, write
the kind of book that you would
want to read. But people are[...]want to look
dumb. I thought I would get down
to the kind of film I really love —
and it was A Star Is Born,[...]ally blew me out. I
reasoned that if I could keep the
magic of that film with me while I
wrote Starstruck it would keep me
going.

So, Jackie became the Judy
Garland character on the way up.
The pub background became the
Norman Main character: the

In A Star Is Born Norman dies
and in Starstruck, which is a much
more simplistic piece, Jackie saves
the pub. That is the pantomime
aspect of it. I think pantomime fits
the form by the very nature of pop
music. I thought Breaking Glass
was a hideous[...]was
serious.

“Starstruck” reminds me greatly of
the pop musicals of the 1960s . . .

We are in the midst of a 1960s
revival, but it is more subtle than
most,[...]rm.

When I first wrote Starstruck, I
was working in London on a Fox
short about the mod revival. So I
set Starstruck in the 1960s mod
style, which was a mistake because
you should always remember
fashion is a wheel and the wheel
turns too quickly for films. David
Elfick [co-producer] then came up
with the shrewd and tough notion
that the period setting might be
seen as a crutch for the film. Aus-
tralians tend to art direct their films
rather than give them a good story.
So David thought the script had to
be made contemporary.

There is a feeling to Starstruck I
connect with British style pieces of
the 1960s: Smashing Time,
Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treat-
ment, Here We Go Round The Mul-
berry Bush.

I had dinner with Diana Melley,
and she mentioned that her
husband George wrote the dread-
ful Smashing Time, “which looked
so old-fashioned when it finally
came out in London.” And I said,
“Oh but we teenagers in Me]-
bourne loved it, because of the
time-gap between us and London.”
We all went and saw those films in
larger numbers than other
countries. They had a sense of
optimism and glossiness which
Australia still feels. Relative to the
rest of the world, we have more to
be optimistic about. Those films
had a kind of screwball fun which
suited the Australian sensibility,
and, even if they maybe weren’t the
greatest films in the world, Aus-
tralians were quick to pick up the
satire.

Look at Can’t Stop The Music.
That film did no business anywhere
in the world whatsoever. It is a
terrible film, but it is pure anarchy
and a big joke on The Gang’s All
Here and all those Twentieth
Century-Fox musicals. Aus-
tralians, apart from the clever sell
that Alan Carr gave it here, got the
joke, whereas the Americans did
not have the sense of humor to get
it. We got the joke about the Here
We Go Round the Mulberry Bush-
type of films better than anybody.

Australians have a highly-
attuned sense of humor. That

Given that at times the film gets into

. . . . . r ‘
alcoholic on the slide down whose comes from being a Comblrlatlon of -—-——————-—-———— a “S where some mum accuse ‘t "1.

time had passed, who was of Scots, Irish and English, who are Top: Jackie and Robbie, leader of The sendmg up mummy groups _e'g"

another era. That pub became a the funniest races of people in exis- /lV"”(’l,b”’}' Abovgflackgifijdjle[...]iiltbafiiildnfilrfgkiodllg
N9” . erry 0 H ' ay, in the pool _
person to me. tence, one way or ano[...]

What about the scene where Jackie
is disappointed because her go[...]at?” Given Jackie’s obvious dis-
appointment, the line has the ring of
trying to play fair . . .

Almost every woman, ho[...]ted, instinctively does not
like finding out that the man of
her affections is gay. That person
being gay cuts her out on the sexual
level, which is a very large level to
be cut out on.

That is why J ackie’s line seems out
of character . . .

Yes. I might have failed there;[...]re-written and changed into a

pool party instead of a leather bar,
as I had originally written it, be[...]already been done. But I did not
quite keep track of the re-writes,
and the actor playing the part, John
O’May, who had seen an earlier
draft[...]part and a
chance to say something. Now they
kind of dump on him when they
find out he is gay.”

I n[...]ation.

Actually, I don’t think her line is
out of character. Angus says, “He
can’t be gayl”,[...]can’t he?” — meaning, “Look
around, a lot of people are.”

It was one of those situations
where I did the re-write to accom-
modate a different situation. When
it was a period script, the kids went
to The Purple Onion, which was a
famous club in Sydney, and they
met this fantastic drag queen, who
looks exactly like Pearl.

There is a scene in the dressing room

of a television station where Jackie
tells her band[...]own life, etc. It is a bit like a
Sybylla speech in “My Brilliant
Career”. But the disaster of the
show teaches her the importance of
other people in her life. Were you
commenting on the problems of per-
sonal independence?

Starstruck is just mean[...]d girls and boys
are usually pretty selfish.

But the structure does lead people to
assume she has been[...]was ‘right’ for
her character as presented to the
public.

Performers rarely know what is

Stephen MafLean

good for them. Mae West is one of
the few in the history of show-
business who knew everything
about what she[...]me
capacity for that. That is why there
are a lot of brilliantly-talented
people around about whom eve[...]ented.” ‘But they do
not have that conception of iden-
tity which is what being a star is.
And Jackie did not have it for
herself; she just had the ambition.

You will find that relationship
through the history of show-
business from time immemorial,
and it is al[...]ser, Judy Garland has her
thug.

Basically, I saw the script as a
love story between Angus and
Jackie, a kind of Les enfants
terribles. The way the film played is
different, because, quite naturally,
it took on a life of its own. Now, it
is not Angus’ story —— it[...]with which to hang on to her.

Gill came up with the idea that
Angus should mature at the end
and find his own girl; he is about to
go off on his own tangent of
maturity. I can remember going,
“Oohhhl”, because I thought of
Saturday Night Fever, the story of
which I loathed. John Travolta
treats all the girls like slobs, then
we are supposed to believe he has
opted for ‘maturity’ at the end
because he aspires to a half-assed,
middle-cl[...]social implications — and it
works.

You wrote in ‘Penthouse" that Gill
wanted to be sure it was[...]Brennan’s . . .

Directors are very suspicious of
writers and expect the worst from
them. But I am not by nature a
writer — in that sense. Having gone
through that whole showbi[...]every point you
win you lose one.

Gill came into the piece quite
late, but she hardly changed the
script. She did fix a hole, however,
and add the finishing touch of
Angus meeting the gum—chewing
girl.

l. Australian Pent[...]

“I was the only person who’d
associate with the producers.”
Sorry it’s an old gag.

Initially[...]usic break-
downs, had lunch with publishers,
put the net out. I’d talk to the Art

116 — April CINEMA PAPERS

Above: Jackie and The Wombats steal the
show at the New Year’s Eve concert. Right.’
Jackie goes t[...]heroes Angus

might paste to his walls, that type
of thing. I also did a few quick
fiddles during sho[...]have liked to, because I
would have altered some of Angus’
dialogue. I wrote his stuff in short,
staccato sentences — the Jewish
kind of talking. Ross O’Donovan
naturally speaks in long, rambling
sentences with a nasal accent. It
was his first part; I would have
liked to have adapted the lines to
him.

But when you hit upon a director,[...]take. And
it was no mistake with Gill.

What sort of audience did you have
in mind?

From nine to 18. If the film
takes, it may then wash into the
broader audience that in the old
days used to trot along and see My
Fair Lady.[...]-
nize and appreciate, and maybe get
a giggle out of.[...]w.

What projects are you working on?

I am doing The Lee Gordon
Story about the eccentric Amer-
ican promoter who sort of colon-
ized Australia during the 1950s.
But that is tough; I haven’t for-
mulate[...]writing a script I call
“Eddie and Katoots”. The two
leads are a kid, because I like
writing about them, and an over-
the-hill model who suddenly has to
do something with her life because
the beauty ideal has changed to 16-
year-olds like Brooke Shields. She
is 32 and never had to do a thing in
her life; now she has to.

Then there is a book I[...]onnected to, Intermission, by
Anne Baxter. She is the actress who
won a few Oscars, then went “B”.
It is basically a love story, about
her four years spent in the Austra-
lian bush. Harry M. Miller now
owns the rights to it.

I saw Anne Baxter in New York
and talked to her about it. I think it
could be one of the few genuine
opportunities one has to show Aus-
tralia to the American perspective.
Our tie with the U.S. on every level,
intrigues and disturb[...]

Monkey Grip[...]on, for producer Patricia Lovell, and is based
on the no vel by Helen Garner.

Noni Hazlehurst as Nora in Ken Cameron '5 Monkey Grip.

CINEMA PAPERS[...]

In 1962, when I was still at
school, my foremost amb[...]evision, and I started to learn
about cameras. At the same time, I
was doing children’s plays in school
holidays and that kept me in there
as far as stage work went.

The thing that was the turning
point in my life, that brought it all
together, happened in 1965. I had
just left high school, and was about
to go on to university, when the
ABC offered me a part in a tele-
vision serial that was going to be
shot o[...]cted by
Ken Hannam, for whom I had
already worked in a television play.
I was only 18, and to go away[...]part series
for children, which was later sold to
the BBC, which repeated it a couple
of years ago. As a result, I am now
getting love-letters from 18-year-
old boys.

Did the opera provide you with the
inspiration to go on to “Band-
stand”?

I did not actually sing in the

opera. The ABC used to do operas
with actors miming opera singers’
voices. It was Hansel and Gretel.
the full Humperdinck opera.
Marilyn Richardson was my[...]ecause you used to sing to
pre-recorded tapes — of your own
voice, of course.

I always wanted to be a singer,
but I di[...]on-
ately, but singing was still good fun.
I sang in a pantomime which led to
me being offered a recording
contract at the same time as Billy
Thorpe. He recorded Poison Ivy[...]ning for actors?

I am all for it. I did not have the
regulation two years at the
National Institute of Dramatic
Artists (NIDA), but I probably had
as much tuition as any of my con-
temporaries who went there — like
Helen[...]itzpatrick and
Judy Morris. I fluked some work at
the Old Tote and found myself with
the same actors and workshops and
classes that they had, for in those
days the NIDA students used to be
understudies for all the produc-
tions at the Old Tote.

Kate Fitzpatrick always reminds
me that the first time she went on
stage she was my understudy. I had
lost my voice when I was doing
Peter Pan in the daytime, and The

Interviewed by Tom Ryan

School Mistress at n[...]didn’t you just mime her voice?

Because it was the same day that
a broken rope made me fall five
metres to the floor. That was awful,
but it gave me one of my better ad
libs. I dragged myself to my feet
and told the world, “Even fairy dust
isn’t foolproof.”

Do you have a preference for stage
work over the other areas of
performance?

No, because film is still a com-
parative novelty for me. I have only
done a handful of films, whereas I
have done dozens of plays. But I
would hate to think I was never
goin[...]again. There is
something fantastic about playing
in front of an audience. I sang for
25,000 people at the Myer Music
Bowl earlier this year — it was
wonderful. You don’t often get
that, but the 1700 at Her Majesty’s
for They're Playing Our S[...]udiences that responses
vary so much, even though the
performance remains constant. I
think that is a c[...]are sometimes
giving and sometimes not.

Yes, but in theatre they, generally
anyway, observe a decorum that one
does not get in cinemas. How do
they communicate to you?

You can hear every gasp and sigh
— you can feel the tensions. Don’t
tell me I am imagining it.

No.[...]g to find out what it is
like. Is it like sitting in a living
room, relating to one person and
trying[...]I feel just like
a radar.

As one primarily bred in theatre,
how important for you is the limita-
tion on rehearsal time in television?

Trial by Marriage is unusual, in
that it was done with a live audience
and in a very regimented way. We
started rehearsals on the Monday,
and went through to Saturday from
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. On the
Saturday we rehearsed all day, and
then the audience came in and we
recorded it that night.

It is true that for a Crawfords
kind of production conditions are
more rushed, and that y[...]a certain facility for
coping. Having done dozens of
Homicides, Division 4s and
Matlocks in the early stages of my
career, I have developed a certain
facility for that kind of thing. I

CINEMA PAPERS April — 121

imagine people who have only had
the luxury of working on film, or in
subsidized theatre, would find it
fairly frustrating. But, in a way, it is
a good training ground.‘

I haven’t done a soapie like The
Restless Years or The Young
Doctors, but I have heard that they
can be[...]than Crawfords, for whom I
must say I have a lot of admiration.
Crawfords have done so much.
They have trained some of our best
people technically: cameramen and
direct[...]te to put soapies down.
because I have such a lot of respect
for the people who work behind the
scenes on them. But that 15 not
the kind of work I want to go into
now.

Can you identify any particular
sources of inspiration or models that
have influenced you as an actress?

When you are heavily involved in
your own work, you are, to a large
extent, cut off from what you can
learn from others. That kind of
learning seems to occur between
heavy jobs. But one of the biggest
influences on me was Judi Dench,
who is just about my favorite
actress, playing Perdita in The
Winter's Tale. It was in 1970. in a
performance by the Royal Shake-
speare Company, for whom she had
also played Viola in Twelfth Night.
Despite the fact that I had been an
actress for eight years,[...]sible.

I had always tried to hide my
personality in a part, submerge it
completely, like Alec Guinness
does. But the example that Judi
Dench set provided a great turn[...]yourself
copying someb0dy’s mannerisms or
style of performance?

Ifl could, I am sure I would, but
t[...]most accents, if
I work hard at them and do a lot of
research, but, when it comes to
imitating other p[...]out.

Do you have preferences for
different types of characters or
roles?

No. I never want to either,
because to me one of the best things
about my work is doing as many
differ[...]ular, because you can do
six different characters in a year,
rather than being stuck in the one.

Your ability to take and make a

It is the usual obvious things that
you learn at drama scho[...]g; I am very ordered
that way.

How important are the lines as they
have been written?

I would rather[...]lines than clumsy,
banal lines. But I think a lot of
actors use that as a cop-out. I think
most actors[...]ne sound good. I see
a bad script as a challenge. The
script is something you can get
around, I think, if you have a lot of
truth.

What does having “truth” mean?

I mea[...]und a
script if you can act.

Do you ever dislike the characters
you play, or do you always have to
fi[...]g them very
much. And that comes naturally. A
lot of drama teachers say you
should try to like the person you’re
playing. That is often difficult,[...]be fairly
easy to summarize your persona as
that of a girl every mother would
like to have as a daughter, forever
cheerful and able to perk others up
in a crisis . . .

I don’t know about the tuck-shop
mothers. A tuck-shop mother at
school u[...]to say, “That one, she’s as
cute as a hatful of razor blades.”

Outside the tuck-shop and your
pram, though, I think my first[...]o think it is more com-
plicated. There is a kind of neurosis
that seems to hover around many of
the characters you play, like Joan in
“Trial by Marriage” . . .

I think with Joan it is more a
psychosis. But the character I have

been playing for two years Il0W,§ play, or heard of you playing, a

Sonya in They're Playing Our
Song, is definitely neurotic.[...]I bring to every charac-
ter. Someone like Josie in Caddie
isn’t at all neurotic. She is very well
balanced. She falls in love with a
sailor who makes her pregnant; it is
the 1930s and the poor girl has to
get an abortion. She has such an[...]she keeps going. I
think Josie has great strength of
character; no neurosis there. I only
wish I were[...]ed.

Perhaps then she belongs to another
category of characters you seem to
play: that of the victim. Like the
wives in “Do I Have to Kill My
Child?” and “Petersen” .

You are right, I think. There is
an aspect of me, a kind of vulner-
ability, I cannot help bringing to
nearly[...]y to hold it down. What I
was urged to give Diane in Do I
Have to Kill My Child? was that
vulnerable g[...]p people to identify with
her, to sympathize with the kind of
hostility a woman (or a man, too)
can feel toward[...]to a baby. It was
a great ordeal.

I really love the wife in Petersen.
I styled her on someone very close
to m[...]character rang very true to
me. Yet, I still have the occasional
woman coming up and saying I
have done a great damage to the
cause of feminism by playing a
woman who is downtrodden like
that. I think that is very stupid.

Are you conscious of being used in
particular roles because you have
certain charact[...]appropriate to those roles?

Probably, yes —— the “vulner-
able‘, lovable thing”. I think I a[...]that too. They
wanted people to like her but, if the
woman had been a bit less sym-
pathetic, the character balance
would have been off. If she had[...]ll; I am just
sitting down.

I think that is what the appeal
was. I know that the scene in the
first series in the restaurant where I
beat up the waiter is very funny:
suddenly two grown men who are
more than six feet tall are terrified
of me. That is pretty funny.

I don’t think I have[...]ona seems too aggressive for
that, too strong for the malw you
would have to play opposite?

Really’? That’s great! I am told
that one of the most appealing
things about me is that I am so
boyish. A lot of people laugh at
that, but, when I think about it,[...]sn’t it? And I have always
wanted to play Viola in Twelfth
Night, which of course is the one
where she is disguised as a boy.

I guess I h[...]hing vivacious and brilliant,
and I am not that.

The press is not all that bad, but I
still get idiot reporters saying,
“Don’t you get sick of playing
dumb blondes?” I don’t play dumb
blon[...]eat not to

care whether people like you. That
is the best way to deal with the
press when you are an actor, I
think, because then it will never get
in the way of your work.

But the press has been, in one sense,
very kind to you . . .

It has been ju[...]s
kind. I can remember every nasty,
unjust or bad review I have had,
every time I have been misquoted.

But the articles that were written
about you while you were in Mel-
bourne were all positive . . .

Yes, but they were all deserved.
Of course . . .

But there is a terrible thing to
co[...]ink
maybe he is brighter than you’d
thought. On the other hand, more
soberingly, comes the thought that
perhaps he is wrong, after all.

The advertising industry generally
seems to find your[...]exploitable. Do you ever feel that it
has got out of your control?

Not altogether. I always have the
power to say no, and I do knock
back a couple of television
advertisements a week. But if some-
thing seems interesting to me, I will

do it — like the Mad Max 2
advertisement. I think they asked
me to do that because they believed
that a lot of young women (my
age!) would think, “There’s a
normal, sane, cheerful, pleasant-
natured mother of one who likes a
film I thought was just a ruffia[...]”

I generally avoid television
advertisements. In fact, I hate
them. But I don’t think the Mad
Max 2 one will do me any harm. I
defy anyone to take me to the
Trade Practices people and claim
that what I said was misleading.

So, it is the product that controls
your choice here . . .

Yes. I have turned down offers
that would have meant a lot of
money. In Melbourne Cup Week
last year, I was offered unbou[...]peal to me at all, so I said no. I
hate that kind of exposure. Money
matters to me, but it does not
ma[...]evision advertisements,
though.

But you do a lot of voice-overs, and
one is forever hearing you on ra[...]ount voice-overs because
there is now an industry in my
voice. God knows why. I think I
have a terrible bloody voice. There
are two girls in Melbourne and a
girl in Sydney who sound more like
me than I do. I listen[...]o, it’s not you. It’s so and so?’

A couple of years ago, I went
into a radio studio to do a job[...]Weaver voice)”.
I said, “Why did you put this in the
script?” and they said, “We
thought you wouldn’t be available.
We were told at the last minute you
were, and that was the script we
were going to use.”

We had just started recording,
when they stopped the tape and
said, “No, no, no! That’s not it.”[...]you mean —
that’s not it? This is it. This is the
Jacki Weaver voice.” We got by,
but what they w[...]’t what they got.

I have also done quite a lot of
putting voices to models, though I
changed my voice a little bit, made
it deeper. I used to do a lot of child-
ren’s voices, too, and quite a few
chara[...]t it is not imitative.

You must come under a lot of pres-
sure to promote the film you are
in . . .

Yes. It is really hard work —

harder than making the actual film.
You really have to be pleasan[...]

the time. You press a button and
then you become a charming,
interesting person. That is the best
sort of publicity the film can get,
and you want the film to do well
because it means more work for
yo[...]l it when
you have been connected with it,
unless of course you are just com-
pletely incapable of doing so.

On the other hand, the press
often uses situations like that to get
at y[...]I
really have given up caring. There
are a couple of days every so often
when I want to get under the
blankets and just stay there, but
generally speaking I can cope. I
fend them off.

I had 14 interviews in one day
recently and every one of them
broached the subject of my
personal life. If you are in a suffi-
ciently anaesthetized frame of
mind, you can cope with that. But I
have been an interviewer myself.
For a year I worked on the Wil-
lesee program, and learned a lot
from that a[...]Caddie {Helen Morse) and Josie (Jacki
Weaver) in Donald Cr0mbie's Caddie.

less of how good an interviewer you
might have been, you[...]e they thought I
would be a good interviewer, but
the only way they could have
known that was because I had once
been interviewed by Willesee in

connection with Caddie. ‘After-
wards they sai[...]eally good inter-
views, I think. But I got a lot of flak
from the press for that too, because

a lot of them jealously guard their
domain. They like to c[...]t is
entirely false, because most people

writing in newspapers nowadays
are practically illiterate; they are
terrible.

What kind of strategy did you use
for interviews?

I knew that I had to be light and,
because most of the people I inter-
viewed were charming, pleasant
and agreeable and I was giving
them the same sort of feedback, it
made for an interesting sort of

parlor discussion. There were areas

Dolly (Jacki Weaver), the brothel madame,
and Piggatt (Michael Long), the puritan cop.
Squizzy Taylor, directed by Kevin Do[...]been good for Cinema Papers, but
for television, in prime time,
nobody wanted to know. They cut it
all out.

Do you find any problems being a
woman in what is still essentially a
male industry?

No. I[...]lay men’s parts. IfI
were, say, a businesswoman in
advertising, my being a woman
might well hold me back. But in my
particular work, I haven’t been
conscious of it as a problem.

In your experience in film, have
there been any particular working
env[...]ence, even though it
appears that I did so little in it. I
did lots more than the release print
shows.

A lot of my stuff hit the floor,
and Peter Weir, who is such a kind
soul, said to me, “The reason your
stuff isn’t there is not because it[...]ot matter to me
because I got six fantastic weeks of
watching Peter work and being in
Clare, which is a wonderful place.
That is a film I most enjoyed just
for the atmosphere, just for being in
It.

I like working with Tim Bur-
stall. There wa[...]s
good, too. I have a favorite story
connected to the opening scene in
Petersen, which people who have
only seen it on t[...]wn my arm and then on to
my stomach to a close-up of my
caesarian scar, and then there is a
cut to an[...]ed to lay music over it.
He was calling down from the
camera encouraging me: “All right
darling, c’mon darling, give him a
hug, c’mon! Let’s see some of that
old suburban ecstasy. C’mon sweet-
heart.[...]ked working with Kevin Dobson
who gives you a lot of freedom.

Concluded on p. 185

Susan Tate

arlos Saura was born in Huesca,

Spain, in 1932. Seven years later,

iGeneral Franco’s Falangist army

defeated the Republican armies,

ending the Spanish Civil War and
beginning nearly 40 years of repressive, military
government in Spain and entirely changing its
cultural life. Spain has always had a history of
repressive government, with the establishment of
the infamous tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition
in 1480, a body which functioned spasmodically
into the 1800s, after its initial burst of purges,
eliminating religious heretics and generally
seeing to the morals of the country.

Likewise, the Junta Superior de Censura
Cinematografica (Supreme Board of Film
Censorship), which was established in 1937 by
rebel troops even before Franco came to power,
served after the victory as a way of supervising
the morals and attitudes of the country. It recog-
nized the potential power of the nascent film
industry and set to work to use it as a vehicle to
consolidate the victory by producing national-
istic, reactionary and propagandist cinema.
Typical of films produced at the time was Raza
(Race), made in 1940, directed by Jose Luis
Saenz de Heredia (who was to become the chief
director for the Franquist regime) and written by
Franco under a p[...]this period, many intellectuals and
artists fled the country, rather than stay and try
to work under its repressive laws. Saura was one
of those who grew up under them. The years of
the Republic from 1931-1936 had seen the rapid
growth of the Spanish film inclustrv. with the

-at

Turns One H“"d"ed'

H creation of the first film studios, and the pro-

duction of the first talkies.
Censorship laws and other prohibit[...]nmental bodies under

Franco were responsible for the cessation of this
growth, the stagnation of any creativity and
guaranteed empty cinemas. Not[...]ilm-
makers obliged to make films that glorified the
Franquist state, but, as Germany had strong
commercial interests in Spain and many theatres

- were German-controlled, in the early years after
the Fascist victory they could not afford to be
critical of the Fuhrer either.

A typically repressive government move was
the blacklist drawn up in 1940, which listed
North American actors who had openly
supported the Republic during the war. Their
names could not be used or mentioned publicly.
Ironically, included on the list was Charles
Chaplin, to whom Saura was later[...]l-
dine Chaplin, was to become his ‘muse’ and the
leading actress inthe script had to be

shown by the filmmaker to a board of

censors which could refuse permis-
sion to make the film on the basis of it, or carve
large chunks out of it. Filmmakers virtually
became hirelings of the state.

The first films produced in Allied countries
were not allowed into Spain until 1943. These
were then dubbed in Spanish. (For linguistic uni-
formity, all Spanish and foreign films were
dubbed in Castilian; other national languages
such as Basque were not allowed.) The plots of
foreign films were subject to dramatic changes.
The married couple in John Ford’s Mo ambo
was given a brother and sister relations ip to
excuse the wife’s illicit affaire with another man.

Comme[...]bbing
licences were given to Spanish producers on the

126 — April CINEMA PAPERS

F
er, Fernando {[...]' ’ Mama
Carlos Saura 5
man Gomez).

basis of the quality of their own films, meaning
those which most gratified the regime. Not to be
left out, in 1950 the Catholic Church created its
own National Board of Classification of Spec-
tacles, which introduced a notorious color[...]white.
Red was accorded to those that would place the
viewer in danger of mortal sin.

It was not until the Spanish government
recognized the importance of creating a more
internationally credible cinema t[...]ere given more financial assistance and free-
dom in their work. Spain received its firstjolt to
its esteem in the eyes of the rest of the world
when it was refused admission to the United
Nations in 1946. However, films whose produc-
tion was encouraged by the Government, with a
view to overseas release and its attendant pres-
tige, were often not released in Spain and only
found overseas markets.

Spain saw the establishment of its first official
school for film studies in 1947: the IIEC (Insti-
tuto Investigaciones y Experimentaciones
Cinematografica), which became in 1962 the
EOC (Escuela Oficial de Cinematografica). Its
existence meant that for the first time students
of film could be exposed to foreign films. It was
at the Italian Cinema Week, held in Madrid in
1949. that they had their first taste of neo-
realism, via the Italian films shown there.

arlos Saura graduated from the IIEC
six years after its establishment, in
1952. His filmmaking owes
something to his exposure to neo-
realism at the college. A year before,
three films appeared which also showed the
influence of neo-realism in Spanish film, as
introduced at the college. They were Surcos
(Furrows) by J. A. Niev[...]Amo. Surcos is significant as it was
his approval of it which had the relatively
progressive Garcia Escudero removed fr[...]ion as Under-Secretary for Cinema.

His return to the position from 1963-67 saw a

new liberalism creep back into the film industry,
when he created a new category for subsidy, that
of “special interest” which replaced the old cate-
gory of “national interest”. He also formed the
experimental art cinemas where such films could
be shown. Before that, in 1952, films were class-
ified from 1A to 3. A film’s position on the scale
usually reflected its “national” interest and
would be financed or refused release in Madrid
and Barcelona according to it.

Saura’s first feature film, Los golfos (The

Hooligans), made in 1959 and generally con-
sidered to be the first of the New Wave of
Spanish Cinema, thus beginning Saura’s career
as one of the first Spanish auteur directors, was
originally cl[...]Escudero resumed his position as Under-
Secretary in 1963 that the film could be released.

The film concerns a group of young delin-
quents and their nefarious attempts to get
money. It is typical of films of the period in its
use of youth as a way of expressing ideas that

otherwise would not have got past the censors. *
This was the first of many feature films Saura

was to make, after a period of experimenting
with documentaries, that used filmm[...]e Mama cumple dios anos
(Mama Turns One Hundred), in 1979. It also
dealt with themes that interested Saura on a per-
sonal level: those of childhood and the oneiric

world in which it is encompassed in later adult
life, concerns which are still present in Mama. It
is typical of the way in which he uses his subject
matter as political symbols and as reflections of
his individual interests, as is also evident in
Mama.

ama Turns One Hundred was

Saura’s entry in the 1979 San

Sebastian Film Festival in

Spain. It was also a highly-

acclaimed entrant in the 1981

Melbourne and Sydney film festivals. The film

was made four years after Franco’s death and

many filmmakers were enjoying the new

freedom that the change of leadership allowed,

making politically-explicit films such as El

deputao (The Congressman) by Eloy de la

.Iglesias, which deals with the persecution

A suffered by a member of the Socialist-Marxist

‘ party from Fascist party members because of his
, homosexuality.

Saura, however, continues t[...]r Fran-
quismo, and because his films are a blend of

ideas not entirely political, which are best
exp[...]debt to Luis Bunuel.

Saura talked about his aims in making Mama
to a reporter at the San Sebastian Festival and
stated that after maki[...]rger,
something that could be geared more towards
the outside”.' He decided to pick up the charac-
ters of a previous film Anna y los lobos (Anna
and the Wolves, 1972) and “see what had
happened to them”? In it he worked with the
same producer, Elias Querejeta,_photographer
Teo[...]plin
and Norman Briskl, whom he has always used.

In these terms, as well as in thematic ones,
there is a continuity and interwea[...]oncerned with making a political
allegory through the characters as in dealing

1. Program of 1979 San Sebastian Film Festival.
2. Ibid.

with the characters as individuals with separate
and private worlds. Anna (Geraldine Chaplin),
of Anna and the Wolves, was the British
governess for the children of a once—wealthy
Spanish family which lives fractiously in a large,
rambling country house in Spain. She returns to
that family with her husband on the occasion of
the Mama’s (Rafaela Aparicio) 100th birthday.

Through setting up this situation, Saura pro-
vides for the occurrence of the elements of
memory and reminiscence in the film, partic-
ularly through Anna, for whom the occasion is
very sentimental, and the Mama, for whom life
in general is laced with sentiment. Anna fondly
remembers the young women as children, for
whom she was governess, and responds to them
accordingly. She also remembers the now
deceased Jose and his military museum,
crammed with uniforms and guns, a more
external reference to the passing of Franco’s
military regime. The reality is that Natalia
(Amparo Munoz) has become a beautiful
seductress, who lasciviously accepts the joint
offered her by Anna’s husband Antonio
(Norman Briski), when, soon after his arrival, he
contemplates the strangeness of the situation he
has walked into.

olitically, Natalia represents the new

liberalism of Spain and greater ’

sexual freedom created by changes in

divorce laws after Franco’s death. 2
On an ind[...]she becomes a A

vehicle for escape and fantasy, the importance of

which, during childhood and in adulthood, is one . .
of Saura’s fascinations. Natalia seduces Antonio F‘
in her fantastic bedroom, a virtual sultan’s tent V

of silks and hashish. Anna’s other ward has
grown[...]her mother, Luchi (Charo Soriano), plots

against the Mama and anticipates her death with
relish. She blatantly asks the Mama at dinner

what she plans to do with the house and the "

estate after her death. Already she and Luchi are
mentally subdividing the land with an eye to
selling it to developers.

A scene which highlights the natures of the
two revolves around the family’s “memory “
box”, a trunk where old clothes and bric-a-brac ;

have been stored. Natalia dips in and finds a
transparent black dress which she wears and
parades in front of Antonio, consolidating the

effect of his seduction the night before. Her 5»
sister instead struts in a military outfit, tapping a

swagger stick in a feisty manner.

Juan (Jose Vivo), one of the Mama’s sons and
Luchi’s husband, has left the household since the

time of Anna and the Wolves, with Amelia the E
cook. His departure is also reflective of the ‘

loosening of marital ties after Franco’s death
and the rush to the divorce courts which ensued.
His affaire with Amelia, especially as she is not
introduced in the film, is another reference to
adult fantasy worlds and the outlet they provide
from domesticity. Antonio’s[...]ne it
when he cannot sleep and Anna keeps pulling the
blankets away from him, grunting contentedly in ,
her sleep. This scene accentuates the eroticism V,

and exotic element of the scene which follows.

With Juan’s departure, and loses death, there
is only one son at home: the pathetic Fernando if
(Fernando Fernan Gomez), who lives in a world 9

of unrealized fantasy. Anna’s return to the house
evokes that period of time for Fernando and the
two eras fuse together in his mind. He recalls his
love for her and is asha[...]trated that he cannot express it. Man’s

dreams of flying are always used to represent a
yearning for the impossible and it is Fernando 3,
who, in some of the most humorous scenes in 7

Concluded on p. 18] if
CINEMA PAPERS Ap[...]

No, I don’t th[...],
I only do things because I am asked
to do them. In fact, I have to turn
things down.

Human nature being what it is,
people have it in their minds that I
can do all sorts of things, which I
very often cannot. Once I

. conducted a children’s perfor-

mance of thethe Minneapolis
Symphony Orchestra asked me to
conduct a whole season. I thought

The awqrd-winning_ actor-writer-director talks about[...]m that I loved music too
much for that.

However, in parenthesis, I did
conduct the Philharmonia Orches-
tra in a film, and the first violin
Peter Usrinov as Hercule Poir[...]

“I have always felt that art, if it is of suf-

ficient quality and is national enough,

wi[...]nducted by many worse”, which I
thought was one of the most flat-
tering things ever said to me.

The first violin’s comment is a
guarded compliment,[...]than writing; I enjoy it very
much. It is a sort of tactical excite-
ment; it does not give you the strat-
egic pleasure of writing something
which is accepted.

I have never regarded myself as a
professional director, in the sense
that I know how to deal with
actors. I know[...], but I
do not have a very developed visual
sense in the case of moving
pictures. I know what can be done,
but I have to stimulate myself in
that sort of way.

I don’t think you can be in two
places at once. You always betray
where you came from and the film
director is rather like a cabinet
minister:[...]may
have grown to directing, but they
never lose the traces of where they
have come from.

I suppose my path has been a
more literary one and therefore, in
the last analysis, I trust a verbal
imagination more[...]hat
can be done.

So, I have never really thought of
myself as a professional director
who is waiting for material. It is a
matter of getting something which
really fires my enthusiasm and I am
capable of doing.

Billy Budd is probably my most
successful[...]emely rigorous because we
were all on board ship. The role of a
captain of a ship and that of a
director of a film are practically
interchangeable. So, when[...]here are we
going now?”, they were asking me
as the skipper as much as the
director. Also, their visual imagina-
tion was automatically stunted by
the narrow possibilities which were
imposed by the fact that we were on
the ship. In other words, if Bach
were suddenly given a romant[...]d not
know where to begin because he did
not live in the same time as Tchai-
kovsky. But if he were reduce[...]have more to contribute as an actor
because I am the type of which
ihere is not a tremendous amount
about. It[...]tly because
people have a more conventional
sense of casting. Poirot has been
very helpful to me becau[...]ough I do other things. And I
would hate to spend the rest of my
time doing nothing but Poirot. At
the same time, I hope I have a
wider range than that. I have
played King Lear twice in the last
two years with some success.

As for writing, I am always
drawn towards the theatre or to
pure literature, more than to films
for roughly the same reasons,
although I have written screen-
pla[...]re important than
he is given credit for, just as the
teacher is much more important in
society than he is given credit for. A
teacher is[...]ted your first film,
“School for Secrets”, at the age of
25, and in a film industry that must
be one of the most precarious in the
world. I am interested in how, at 25,
you got to be directing Ralph Rich-
a[...]r late to ask me. I felt I had
practically missed the bus when 24
arrived and nothing happened.

School for Secrets really hap-
pened because of Felippo del
Giudice, an Italian who had played
an important part in the British
film industry. He was an ebullient

man who was a kind of Sancho
Panza to J. Arthur Rank’s Don
Quixote. T[...]School for Secrets, which was
a big success, for the Air Ministry
really. They wanted to have some-
thing about radar which was on the
same lines as In Which We Serve
or The Way Ahead.

They were such extraordinary
days tha[...]stopped shooting for a
day to allow me to get out of the
army. I had to go to Olympia and
get a nasty suit[...]eant, which was my compensa-
tion for having been in there for
four-and-a-half years and now
facing civvy street. I had to have a
medical and all the things you do
when you get out of the army. And
they actually stopped shooting for a
day which cost us a lot of money.
They were forced to; there was no
way round it because I had started

Peter Ustinov in uniform for Private
Angelo, which he co-directed[...]on temporary leave.

I had to do all my research in
uniform at RAF stations, often get-
ting rooms wh[...]ivate. It was a
very peculiar situation, but then the
military is very odd. I hated every
minute of it, but I never regretted it
because it taught me a great deal. I
knew it would be hysterically funny
in retrospect, even if atrocious at
the time.

It is surprising you have not direc-
ted more films. The three films you
did direct in the 19405, “School for
Secrets”, “Vice Versa”[...]nt that British films
could have made a lot more of. Why
did you limit yourself in this way?

Because I felt the British film
industry was barking up the wrong
tree. They were trying to get advice
from the U.S. — or from Ameri-
cans — on how to break into the
American market. This meant they
got hold of some very third-rate
American advisers to[...]

I opposed the tendency of trying
to enter the American market with
an amorphous, hybrid product[...]leave
Rome. Stanley Kubrick’: Spartacus. Right:
The Ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) and Lola
Montes (Martine Carole) in Max Ophuls’

have always felt that art, if it is of L0“ M””’“'

sufficient quality and is n[...]le
if everybody had been trying to
speak American in order for the
people in Peoria to understand. The
Beatles proved that when they
broke into the U.S. market. They
did not make any compromise on[...]Quo Vadis and suddenly there
was no looking back in that line.

In fact, you worked in three more or

less ‘sandal and toga’ films in the
1960s: “Quo Vadis” for Mervyn

130 — April CINEMA PAPERS

9

LeRoy, “The Egyptian’ for
Michael Curtiz, and “Spartacus”
for Stanley Kubrick . . .

I think the Americans are the
only people who can do ancient
Roman films for the simple reason
they are like the ancient Romans. If
you go into the Chase National
Bank to get a loan you are taken
into a room with columns of gor-
gonzola and, in the middle of all
this, a furled flag and an eagle
behind him, his feet on the table,
the bank manager is saying, “Why
don’t we go home and continue this
conversation by the atrium and
kick this idea around.” It is the
mixture of extreme relaxation and
formality and majesty whic[...]ibly well. Everybody
got riled when Robert Taylor in

Quo Vadis said: “Why don’t you
bring Priscilla and the kids over for
the weekend?”, but that is pre-
cisely what a Roman of those times
would have said.

What differences di[...]ck I cannot really speak
about because it was one of his first
films. Hehad done two brilliant
films b[...]le and he was sud-
denly launched into this world of
super productions. So he was rather
subdued.

I said in my book that at that
moment he had none of the virtues
but also none of the vices of youth.
One did not know how old he was.
He was an[...]very
much.

As for LeRoy, I was able to tell
him the other day that the French
had just had a retrospective of his
films at the Cinematheque in Paris
and that several eminent French
critics had praised him for his style.
He took his cigar out of his mouth
and said, “What style, for Christ
sak[...]ost an insult to have
himself loaded with style.

The crowning film of your career,
and indeed almost the crowning
experience of films in its decade,
was Max Ophuls’ “Lola Montes”.
What can you say about working
with Ophuls?

The first night of the film was an
absolute disaster: the film broke
twice. But Ophuls rather enjoyed it.
H[...]e it

seemed almost too good to be true.

I wrote the obituary for The
Guardian on Ophuls and in it I said
he was a man of such perversity
that he was capable of making the
smallest wristwatch in the world
and then hanging it on a cathedral
so that passers-by could see the
time. He was a mischievous and
delightful man. I[...]with him.

Ophuls had Cinemascope
imposed on him in that film and he
did not like it because he loved the
incredible intimacy — I mean
almost embarrassing intimacy ——
of the screen. He said to me with a
mischievous look, “Peter, I have
found a way of defeating Cinema-
scope today.” I thought, my G[...]reat deal.

On Lola Montes, I had to do my
scenes in French, German and
English. People forget Lola Montes
was done in three separate ver-
sions, one after the other, so there
was no possibility of only doing one
take; there had to be a minimum of
three. It was ridiculous, because
Martine Carrol[...]ehind my head. I had to
move my head according to the
direction of her eyes so she could
see the board. I asked her to make a
slight gesture when[...]ished
talking because I could not recog-
nize it [the way she spoke].

One day, Ophuls had me do a
four-and-a-half minute take. I was
the ringmaster and had to shout as
all sorts of horses and things and a
dwarf moved past. In the middle of
one of the many takes I suddenly

got hoarse, and I sent the dwarf for
a glass of water. He was surprised
as it was not in text, but he went
away and got it. At the end, Ophuls
came to me with a slightly res[...]

The glittering occasion of the London
Film Festival's 25th jubilee brought a
singular honor to the Australian cinema:
Gallipoli was chosen for the gala open-
ing, in the presence of the Prince and
Princess of Wales, five weeks before the
film was to open in London's West End.

British critics, predictably bemused by
the sprinting sequences, keep compar-
ing Gallipoli to Hugh Hudson’s Chariots
of Fire, but it is closer to All Quiet on the
Western Front. Of course, the script
takes the easy (though historically ac-
curate) option of blaming the British
commander for the battle‘s tragedy; had
he been less stupid, the Anzacs may
have survived, and won. The ethics of
winning — that is, the ethics of war — are
never even questioned.

With the period setting, the attitudes of
the period dominate the film's emotional
world. But Gallipoii leaves a memory of
Russell Boyd's fine camerawork flatter-
ing the handsome horses and men,
flashing smiles and sunny skies; and of
one heart-rending moment as the
soldiers festoon the sandbags along their
trench with personal possessions which,
at the sound of the attack, sldnly _ rn into
treasured mementoes of the dead.

Peter Weir's London Film Festival
triumph[...]s: John Duigan’s nostalgic
yet quizzical Winter of Our Dreams;
Michael B|akemore’s disarmingly candid
Personal History of the Australian Surf,
where he establishes himself as the
perennial “straight poofter”; Gillian
Armstro[...]etter,
which was paired off with my favorite film
of the year, David Bradbury’s Public
Enemy Number One[...]t, Cinema Papers, No. 32,
p. 142).

Gratifyingly, the best of the films New
Zealand showed at Cannes, smash
Palace[...]nd all who caught its
single screening liked it.

In common with every other festival,
the London Film Festival receives agreat
deal of criticism from various quarters.
With apparent an[...]rectify everything that
could possibly be faulted in connection
with their programming. Too many big-[...]stablished directors’? Well,
there is a section of the Festival devoted
to New Directors. Too many films which
reflect the taste of the middle-class,
middle-aged Establishment? Answer:[...]ough avant-garde works? Well, try
to separate all the British and all the
American films into mainstream and in-
dependent cinema, and keep one‘s
fingers crossed that enough of the in-
dependents should turn out to be avant-
garde as well.

Above all, never let it be said that the
Festival neglects the Third World. This
year it had six films from Africa — of
these, Trances, directed by Ahmed El
Maanouni, was the most praised — and
12 from Asia. After all, they make more
films in Asia than in the rest of the world
put together, and with two new films by

LO[...]il Taylor

“iii

Ian McKeIIar as D. H. Lawrence in C /rrislopher Miles’/ilm of the writer's life, Priest of Love.

Mrinal Sen, a Lester Peries from Sri
La[...]were six
films from Latin America — never mind
the quality, just feel the revolutionary fer-
vor.

Of course, the Controversy section
consists of films difficult to classify, and
easy to misconstrue. It may be a practical
way of labelling, like the “Miscellaneous"
drawer of any filing clerk. And yet, how
can such disparate[...]do with atom
bombs is necessarily controversial: The
Day After Trinity, by John Else, about the
work of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his
team, is history by now. But then, Shuji
Terayama’s The Fruits of Passion,
perhaps because a semi-Western cast
incl[...]under
Controversy. To accommodate such

films as The Fruits of Passion, Mauro
Bolognini‘s The Lady of the Camellias,
Bertrand Blier’s Beau pere or Frank
Perry’s Mommie Dearest, the London
Film Festival will need to invent yet
anot[...]ould be,
simply, Moneyspinnersl

British — Best of. . . ?

When the London Film Festival began,
its avowed aim was to bring the best
foreign films, particularly winners from
international festivals, to London. But
when the British cinema Iurched from
crisis to crisis, the Festival has increas-
ingly accepted the provision of a show-
case for new British films as its duty and
included them in the program, whether
they reached the highest international
standards or not.

Some British productions can of
course stand up to any comparison, and
cannot be[...]h have broken
through international barriers; but the
only feature film of this class had already
been seen at Cannes: Ken Loach’s
Looks and Smiles. But neither the critical
esteem it achieved in Cannes, nor its

success in London, has achieved cinema
distribution for it.[...]vision — Adrina, directed
by Bill Forsyth, with the supernatural
element so dear to BBC-Scotland, and[...]eenplay — Looks and Smiles too is
going back on the shelf, awaiting its
television broadcast.

Two fi[...]Burning an illusion, had been shown at
Edinburgh in August. They were aided by
the BFI Production Board, whose
finances are on a much smaller scale
than the Australian Film Commission's;
the result is that their films look as if they
were made to order for the “alternative
festival circuit" of Edinburgh, Mannheim,
Rotterdam and so on, and ten[...]complicated time-
structure to avoid that bugbear of “the
bourgeois cinema", plain linear
narrative. Noneth[...]finer
points, even apart from its worthy
ideology of drawing parallels between
Irish rule in Ulster and the male domina-
tion endured by lrish women.

There are some excellent scenes,
mostly location shooting (in more than
one sense of the word) in Belfast, and,
towards the end, the family relationships
emerge with increasing sensitivity. But it
has many faults as well, which all stem
from the script. The photography is more
than competent throughout, and some of
the acting catches the-mood, as well as
the intonation, of militantly lrish speech
patterns.

By contrast, B[...]director, contrives to present a
radical subject in a conventional, almost
soap-opera format. The heroine, a
British-born colored girl, starts with the
morality and expectations of middle-
class British society, only to find that
these attitudes and aspirations are not
shared by the young men of her world.
Firstly, circumstances force her to look
for her roots in African culture and racial
consciousness, which develops her
dignity and strength.

In spite of slight faults, Burning an illu-
sion brings out the relevant emotional
and social issues without overt comment
or proselytizing.

The British premiere given special
prominence, by being chosen to close
the Festival, was Priest of Love, directed
by Christopher Miles from Alan Plater's
screenplay, based in turn on Harry T.
Moore's biography of D. H. Lawrence. As
with so many British productions, the
cast of established theatrical stars (Ian
McKellen, Janet Suzman, Penelope
Keith) do their utmost, but the script has
a numbing banality, in spite of the juicy
literary scandals of Lawrence's life, and
the direction has all the verve of a
metronome.

As shown in Ken Russell's Women in
Love, Lawrence is the one writer whose
works can sustain an imag[...]

The documentaries, however, were of
a remarkably high standard. Even
though it may have been better suited
under the heading of Controversy, The
Animals Fllm, written and directed by
Victor Schonfeld, is outstanding in every
way. It covers one of the most debated is-
sues in Britain: the treatment accorded
by people to the other animals. The film
first shows the misuse of animals as pets.
then their abuse in factory farming, their
torture in laboratory experiments, and
the deliberate encouragement of cruelty
in such traditional sports as foxhunting,
deer shoot[...]sing. Well-
structured and thoroughly researched,
the film is as good as its footage, some of
it shot in secret, possibly allows. While it
may help the Animal Liberation Front,
whose campaign the film supports, it is
also good cinema.

Another documentary. So That You
Can Live, made by the Cinema Action
collective, follows the life of a Welsh
family through five years of economic
and political change. Another dimension
is added by linking the family’s attitudes
to those of the 19th Century Welsh work-
ing class, and the Evening institute and
Worker's Library movement which
characterized the previous generations.
In spite of occasionally confusing
flashbacks, and its rather random inter-
cutting of the general with the intimate,
So That You Can Live is a remarkable
experiment, testing to the limit the
honesty possible in a documentary, and
accepting the process of filmmaking as a
factor of change in the family's life.

A last-minute addition came from Lutz
Becker, whose The Double-headed
Eagle, shown in 1973, established him as
one of the major figures in the historic
documentary. (Becker had also co-
operated with Philippe Mora on
Swastika.) His latest film, Lion of Judah,
also took several years to research,
collage, edit and provide with a commen-

The history of a Welsh family through five years of economic and political change: So That You Can Li[...]PAPERS

tary. Becker’s basic technique is still the
same: he uses the original, contem-
porary newsreels and propaganda films
to show events; but junking the original
soundtracks. Instead, he adds commen-
tary in which he is not ashamed to show
hindsight, as well as music, to deepen
the meaning of his images.

In Lion of Judah, he uses the
recordings that an anthropologist friend
made of Ethiopian folk music in the
1960s. Musso|ini's campaign to annex
Ethiopia in 1936 is shown as an at-
tempted genocide of unmitigated cruelty.
The newsreels showing the Italian ad-
vance are actually seen from the point of
view of their victims, and fascinating
footage which seems to come from Haile
Selassie's private records illustrates the
Emperor’s brave but doomed resistance.

The most moving moment of the dis-
cussion, and possibly of the entire
Festival, came when a member of the
audience thanked Lutz Becker for the
compassion and dignity his film dis-
played towards the people of Ethiopia.

Even apart from Becker's co-
production, German films appeared to
advantage in each Festival section.
Volker Sch|ondorff’s The Forgery,
another last-minute addition, aroused
the most interest: it examines a German
journalist's confusion in the civil war of
Lebanon —— it hardly matters whether a
few years ago, or in the present.

Among the New Directors section,
Percy Adlon’s Celeste, w[...]y Sohrab Shahid Saless, came on video
only. It is the most visually ambitious of
Saless’ films so far, and as he has
already collected a solid corps of British
admirers, a large-screen showing would
ha[...]Reinhard Hauff‘s Endstatlon lrelhelt lost
even the pun of the title in the translation
(in English, it is called Slow Attack) and
the sub-titles lack the subtlety of
dialogue which, in German, establishes
the complex characters. The London

.*‘t“

One of the finds of Cannes I 981: Percy AIdon’s Celeste.

audience was left with an above-average
popular thriller, without the philosophical
undertones.

The Controversy section also included
Frank Ripploh's[...]rte (No Mercy No Future) by Helma
Sanders-Brahms: the latter won the BFI
Film Award for 1981 as “the most original
and imaginative film introduced by the
National Film Theatre during the year”.
This is the first time since the Award’s in-
auguration that it was won by a woman.
The jury described Die beruhrte as

“a daring, imaginative and moving

portrait of a schizophrenic woman,

which questions society's definitions of
madness and exposes its intolerance

towards those beyond its under-
standing".

Multiple Choices

In keeping with the London Film
Festival tradition, most foreign film[...]be happier to
choose more than one film, but, all the
same, it adds a pleasant, personal note
to be res[...]efore,
during and after its screening — and for
the director, should he choose to come.

Had I seen Miklos Jancso‘s The
Tyrant’s Heart, I may have chosen it, if
only b[...]eals,
and this is his most complex and
emblematic in a long time. However, my
nominee, Duty Fre[...]

Apart From The Films

All in all, the Festival should not be
criticized for any of its programming, as It
would only result in 20 more films being
added to an already overcrowd[...]ism should be (or
must be) directed at its venue. The
National Film Theatre is far too small for
a festival for the 10 million inhabitants of
London: not only its auditoria, but the
foyers, bars and other facilities all
become squalid half-way through the
day.

The present system of a few (eight, to
be precise) forays into Leicester Square
on Sunday mornings, or up the stairs to
the Queen Elizabeth Hall, may relieve the
congestion a little, but without adding
giamor. A[...]itional publicity to
justify some investment from the film
industry or the distributors; a larger
theatre would make it- possible to
accommodate the larger public which is
frustrated by the present system of
preferential booking for British Film
institute members.

Then, there may be room in the NFT —
even if only in the smaller NFT-2 — for
press conferences. Now, dir[...]nd that their only contact with
their audience or the press is limited to a
discussion after the screening. This is
sometimes cut to 10 or even fi[...]saying: "We must leave now,
but you can continue the discussion in
the foyer” - that is, in the middle of
hundreds trying to get in or out, queue-
ing at three box-offices and four toilets.
Any discussion in such a place creates a
traffic jam rather than a more subtle
understanding of a director’s work. A
skilled journalist can alw[...]t an
audience reaction to a new work. So,
even if the idea of moving to the heart of
London continues to meet resistance, it

should be possible to make time for
proper press conferences in London, as
at any other proper festival.

Even if two hours were set aside each
day, in the smaller of the two theatres, it
would only mean a reduction of 19 films.
Out of more than 130, this does not seem
to be an irredeemable loss; and perhaps
the Festival would be less like a factory

with films[...]on day and night shifts.
Mari Kuttna

Animation

The Festival's Animation section
continued its tradition of cramming into
two programs an admirable and
numerically limited selection of "the best
of" world and British output. Forty films
were screened, ranging in length from 13
30-second British commercials to t[...]tful and deceptively
simple Canadian film History of the
World in Three Minutes Flat — proving
that it is breathl[...]winner at Ottawa 1980, Mills‘ mad-cap
rush from the Beginning to the End was
warmly received by the audience
attending the gala opening of Peter
Weir’s Gailipoli.

At the 1980 Zagreb Festival the inter-
national Association of Animated Film-
makers (ASIFA) agreed on a redefinition
of “animation" — from the old “frame-by-
frame" to “the creation of moving images
through the manipulation of all varieties
of techniques apart from live-action
methods”. Thi[...]date such new techniques as com-
puter animation. The 11 films in the world
program, selected from entries in the
1981 Annecy Festival, included a Polish
film which offended animation purists
and inspired the Annecy Jury to award it
the Grand Prix: Zbigniew Rybczynski‘s
eight-minute Tango. it pushes ASlFA's
definition to the limits.

Flybczynski uses individual photo-
graph[...]to create pixiliated, but
not quite, live-action. The film opens on a
room. A ball bounces through the
window and a boy climbs through to
retrieve it. A woman enters cradling a
baby, then sits at the table and nurses it.
As she stands and leaves, a[...]side door carrying a package. While
he is placing the package on top of the
wardrobe, the bail bounces through the
window and the boy climbs through to
retrieve it. When the man leaves by
another door, a thief lurking at the
window steals the package. As he is
leaving, the woman cradling the baby
returns until some 36 characters
crowd into the room, wordiessiy perform
some private motion, then leave — only
to return almost immediately and repeat
the same action exactly: a naked woman
dressing; a ma[...]ts and
flexes his muscles; a couple makes love
on the bed; a baby's nappy is changed;
an old woman rest[...]A rhythmic tango melody by Janusz
Hajduk provides the metre for this
superb, surreal dance of everyday life.
The State-room scene in A Night at the
Opera is similar; but Tango is not played
for laughs.

At the Zagreb Festival, the emerging
Josko Marusic, from the Zagreb Film
Studio, won second prize for Fisheye.[...]and hyperactive
cartoon recounts yet another day of life
in a tower block. Little figures scurry
about the cross-section of the building —
the main communication channels being
the lift and the sewer.

The activities are depressingiy routine
and occasionally repetitive, like the
naked girl lying on the bed waiting for a
man who peels away layer upon layer of
clothing. Some are blissfully ironic, like
the man who deviously conceals his
money in an open wail-safe behind a
painting, only to have a gaggle of
chortling thieves pitter-patter away with
the painting. And some are tinged with
despair: a tenant who fails to wake up is
rushed away in a coffin by the squad; a
character paces in a room and bleeds
into the toilet; a man threatens to jump
and does so; a child searches for its
mother. Toward evening the workers

return and pack into the lift. At night, all
except one sit isolated in their rooms
watching the same television program.
The loner locks himself in the lift’ and

screams.
Two films touched upon the subject of

I 981 London Film Festival

the aged. The first, from The
Netherlands, was Paul Driessen‘s dis-
passionate and fataiistic Het treinhuisje
(Home on the Rails), a black comedy
about two pensioners taking tea in a
room. Every hour, when the cuckoo
strikes, their routine is interrupted by a
frantic thumping on the door. The
woman opens it and a squirrel leaps in
and flattens itself against the wall. When
the opposite door is opened, a train roars
through the house. Driessen‘s finely-
lined figures, cool pastel colors and wry
humor are contrasted with the lumpy
characters, some running gags with the
cuckoo clock and a mute tragedy when
the old man lies across the rails after his
sackfui of gold has been stolen by claim-
jumpers.

The second film, Birgitta Jansson’s
Semesterhemmet (The Summer Camp),
won public and critics’ prizes at Annecy
and was the Festival program’s sole clay
animation film. it[...]son’s eye for character is
sensitively realized in the figurines‘
modelling, movement and gesture, and
is charmingly enhanced by the idea of
providing her characters with actual
voices recorded at a Swedish summer
camp in 1980.

Although the Festival was not provided
with a subtitled print, the documentary
technique is sufficiently atmospheric to
raise the issue of verisimiiitude — an
issue which is succinctly and plausibly
resolved.

Ferenc Rofusz’s A legy (The Fly), from
Hungary's renowned Pannonia Film
Studi[...]as a
masterpiece. Told subjectively and
drenched in golden monochrome, the
artwork effectively simulating wide-angle
distortion, it is about a fly which senses
the approach of autumn and, seeking
refuge, buzzes into a farmhou[...]ly an irritated and unseen
human pursuer launches the fly on a
frantic bid for escape and survival.

The film excited spontaneous
applause and won the Best Film Award at
Ottawa 1980, then went on to win the
Oscar for the Best Animated Short Film
of 1981. While these are early days for its
inclusion in an Animation Pantheon, A
Iegy is nevertheless tec[...]and engagingiy
witty.

Compared with these films, the six
selections from North America were
mostly parochial and nostalgic. in
George Griffin's Flying Fur, a strike by
the mice at ACME Film Productions

Simulated wide-angle distortion: Ferenc Rofuszk The Fly.

CINEMA PAPERS April — 133

provokes a chase by their colleagues, the
cats. The film unintentionally captures
the drift of the North American entries
since, as a homage, it uses the
soundtrack of the 1944 Hanna-Barbera
cartoon for MGM Putting on the Dog.
The other American entry, Barrie Nel-
son's Opens Wedneedey, wasn't any
more promising. it turns on the idea of a
theatre producer rehearsing his cast of
shapes and characters to a colorful floral
finale[...]ed by such lines as,
“Excuse me. have you heard of Stanis-
lavsi<y or Woody Allen?” from the
theatre's interfering cleaning lady.

Opens Wednesday was awarded the
jury prize at Ottawa '80 and the Grand
Prix at the 1981 ASlFA Festival in New
York.

The four Canadian entries were better.
Winning a Special Jury Prize at Annecy,
Frederic Back's Crac is the story of a
handcrafted rocking chair from the
moment the carpenter fells a tree (hence
the onomatopoeic title) in a small
farming community in 19th Century
Quebec, through succeeding generat-[...]fields
and lifestyles. to its last resting place in
the city's Museum of Modern Art where it
is used by one of the attendants. The set-
piece rural wedding reception, where the
blue-shadowed revellers swirl to
Quebecoise folk music. is joyfully
repeated in the darkened museum. The
rocking chair is once again the centre of
attraction and it whirls the sterile
abstracts back to a richer, more un-
equi[...]ast Sing, from
international Ftocketship Ltd, won the
prize for a Film for Children at Annecy.
Burrowed away behind the razor-sharp
lines and flat color areas of conventional
cartooning is a surreal behind-the-
scenes look at showbusiness. Toledo
Mung Beast, half-man half-cephalopod.
lazily performs the laid-back Willie
Mabon blues number, "|'m Mad", on a
baby grand for Vern and his pet cactus.
In an adjacent, modishly-furnished
loungeroom, a chicken roasts a chicken
over a candle, Black Ear the Dog sits
frozen with his scotch and a poodle leaps
about blowing a cool sax. When Toledo
finishes and tosses the question, “What
do you think'?", the room does a Dali by
obligingly melting.

Crac and Sing Beast Sing
demonstrate the Capabilities of Canada's
emerging independent animation
industry, though the National Film Board
continued to reinforce its so[...]with two superbly-crafted films. Sheldon
Cohen's The Sweater, from a story by
Roch Carrier, is a charming reminisc-
ence about how, in the winter of 1946 in
the small Quebec community of Ste
Justine, a 10-year-old boy faces his life's[...]ite and blue French
Canadian hockey sweater, with the
famous Number 9 on the back, becomes
threadbare and his mother buys a new
one by mail-order. When the sweater
arrives, the boy finds it is not the familiar
French Canadian Number 9, but the blue
of the rival Toronto Maple Leaf team. He
throws a tantrum, to little avail. The boy is
doomed to go down to the village rink in
his new Toronto Maple Leaf sweater and
be rejected by all his friends wearing the
French Canadian Number 9. The village
curate pronounces him a rebel and
sends him to church to repent. “I asked
God", recalls the older and wiser
narrator, "to send a hundred mill[...]o eat up my Toronto Maple Leaf
sweater."

Clearly the best of the North American
entries, however, was Clorinda War[...]after her sudden death by two fellow
animators at the NFB, Lina Gagnon and
Suzanne Gervais. it is a film of simple.
mutable beauty. Lines like vapor trails,
pulsating with a life of their own, swirl in
constant flux against a background of
pastel shades to momentarily suggest an
image — a landscape at sunrise, a man
and a woman, the birth of a child —
before dissolving in a melange of
rippling line and soft hues, thus unfolding
the idea of perpetual creation. Merging
with these transitory[...]t Annecy and, together with
Tango and A legy, was the highlight of
London's World Program.

The influence of the peace movement
and the concern of the Committee for
Nuclear Disarmament were evident in the
Festival's British Program. Ofthe 15 films
and 13 advertisements screened to an
audience composed largely of members
of the local industry, four films were
pessimistic about the present, while
another four dealt specifically with the
coming holocaust. And. while British
animation co[...]resourceful and
competent work by newcomers. For the
first time for two years, however, the
work of Bob Godfrey (Dream Doll in 1979
and Instant Sex in 1980) was sadly
absent.

Russell J. Brooke's The Comic Story
is an oblique and light-hearted frame
story set in that vague land where reality
and fantasy converg[...]alks home through a
graveyard where an assortment of
ghouls scheme to distract him with a few
transmogrification tricks. The boy is

oblivious to their antics (including a
di[...]: "Lines like vapor trails, pulsating with a life of their own

I34 — April CINEMA PAPERS

A Treb[...]Ian Moo- Young.

change into a bat, succeeding the
second time only after colliding with a
tombstone wicket) because the comic
characters are more horrifically
compelling[...]ch was first.

Sheila Graber's Face to Face takes the
idea of metamorphosis into more familiar
territory. Using the simple technique of
animating a paint and crayon sketch, she
ages a c[...]er James’ After Beardsley, with
artwork ghosted in the artist's style
suggesting how he would have postered
the modern world, including The Bomb.
if he hadn't died of consumption at the
age of 25, and the Brothers Quaij's Ein
brudermord (A Fratricide), a[...]wed as two insects, would have won
pens down.

As the opening titles came up for the
latter film, one scornful member of the
suddenly restless audience cried out,
"What is a German film doing in a British
Animation Festival?''

The four films which presented a
nuclear Armageddon a[...]gence was regrettable. They were
introduced with the well-known "The
Babel Fish” episode from Douglas
Adams’ Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy, animated by Rod Lord, for the
BBC. it was followed by Pretend You'll
Survive, a[...]r
removed from World War I propaganda
films about the ravaging Hun, it achieved
image overkill as it fo[...]television screen. “It could
happen today", but the day passes
uneventfully: "lt didn't happen today.[...]ity
prevails. Then it happens. After a long
night of street cries and civil unrest, she
emerges from the ruins of her home to
find the landscape devastated, her
body ravaged by radiation and the air
swarming with bloated flies. "Don‘t
Pretend to Protest" warns the grim end-
title.

Robin Whiteman's sequential and
pessimistic The Way of the Fool
presented, but hardly developed, a novel
idea: Tarot cards for the nuclear age.
Moving from Creator/inventor —

through such opposites as The
Cycle/The Wheel, Revelation/Explosion
and The Star/The Blast — to Whole-
ness/Extinction, each card depicted a
rapid, multicolored pattern of images:
from the sea and the land, to missiles
and The Bomb.

The best of the peace films, however,
was John Hales’ Dilemma,[...]with a pessimism about man's
destiny bordering on the grotesque,
Dilemma is a grand parade of familiar
and cherished icons fragmenting to reveal
tableaux of apocalyptic potential. The
mask of Tutankhamun becomes an
Egyptian war chariot, Greek and Roman
busts of philosophers easily change into
phalanxes and legions, an Aztec idol
becomes an army — as does the bene-
ficent image of the Buddha, and
Leonardo da Vinci's contribution
included designs for military machines.

Although the intent behind succeeding
civilizations’ resort[...]eir development
rather than sinisterly bellicose, the game
was always up. But now the development
of microchip technology provides
improved missile de[...]ships become larger, swallowing
smaller versions, in a cosmic and
technological version of the survival of
the fittest. Frequently these images
revert to the bland. changeless icon of
man. lmpassive throughout history,
blinded by today's media, ignorant about
the consequences of conventional and
nuclear armament, man is about as
secure as a light globe target for a rifle.

The remaining films were a jumble of
varying styles and particular interests.
They included Nick Lever’s orthodox
John Barleycorn, the song with pictures;
Stuart Wynn Jones‘ elaborately supple
experimental film Organic Canonic Icon,
in which tubular shapes flourish
luxuriantly around an onrushing
vanishing point to the soothing strains of
Pachelbel's “Canon"; Neil Thomson's
suspenseful extrapolation of a Max
Klinger etching entitled In Fiagrenti; Alex
Brychta's Flora Dance, where wild-
flowers are used as convenient
instruments in a live-action day-
dreaming youth's ‘brass’ band — the
notes being cleverly improvized by
Vivian Fisher'[...]xed; John J.
Miller's accomplished cartoon Act V, the
Graveyard Scene from Hamlet,
characterized[...]

Overall, the 13 commercials demon-
strated the British industry's search for a
narrative format[...]irtation with musical interpretations.
And, while the work of Richard Taylor
and Vera Linnecar was absent, Geof[...]their
successes at Ottawa '80. Dunbar was
awarded the Grand Prix for Ubu and
Vestor received a Special[...]ovided
two more commercials for Alka Seltzer,
and the prolific lan Moo-Young
presented his Magoo-like Norman
Normal character in a gaudy and fluent
ad for Trebor’s 'Dandies‘.[...]s by Eric Goldberg.
Nairn Arena Cushion Floor and the anti-
smoking Nick-0-Teen, and the lyrical
Tempest ad for Shell by Russell Hall.

The final film on the British program.
Richard Wolff's Still Life, is a bright and
ingeniously-scripted satire on the life and
aesthetics of the egocentric Scottish
artist Lawrence Angus MacConI,
renowned for his dining and vehicle
pictures. Lawrence, the narrator Gary
Bond tells us, tried most schools of
painting -— Cubist, Surrealist (witness his
“[...]nce
stated that his paintings could be
understood in one second, his bio-
graphers take him at his wor[...]'s work. With a script as
taut and witty as this, the visuals become
complementary: "ln one moment he
became older. One moment. Older." The
moments in this intelligent and hilarious
spoof of the art world and films on art are
rich and many.

Jazz

The Jazz Program consisted of shorts
and feature-length documentaries,
mostly from the U.S. The Festival
audience was touched, not only by the
music and the cloying sense of nostalgia,
but also with gratitude for the concern of
sympathetic filmmakers who managed to
retrieve some moments and memories of
past musicians which would otherwise
have been lo[...]-
becke's gin-soaked latter years, before
he died of pneumonia in New York on
August 6, 1931, that many people
remember. The drink —- and his music.
The tone he achieved was difficult for his
contempora[...]in' else". As Louis
Armstrong was to say later on in -the
1930s, "Ain't none of them play like him

at."
y Armstrong's comment still stands and
forms the subtitle to Bix, a labor of love by
CBC-TV producer Brigitte Berman. For
four years, in her spare time, she criss-
crossed theof time, had
not been able to forget him after 50
years.”

in this comprehensive film biography,
narrated by Ri[...]and Edward Hopper paintings
(no film exists today of Bix playing),
Berman has assembled as rounded a
portrait as we will possibly ever have of
the jazz musician who, along with
Armstrong, was the heart of jazz in
the 1920s. She has also collated an
enviable collection of Bix’s work: “Jazz
Me Blues”, "Royal Garden Blues",
“Riverboat Shuffle" and “Tiger Rag” by
The Wolverines; “Davenport Blues" by
Bix and his Rh[...]he provides some
cool and lingering seascapes for the
recording of Bix playing his piano
composition "In a Mist", it is a reminder
of the theme throughout — that Bix
Beiderbecke was a p[...]explains.
talked through his music "straight from
the heart and told you what he was
thinking”.

Berm[...]athetic film is
enjoyable and timely, and it sets in high
relief the realization that Bix Beider-
becke, the “born genius” who opened up
new avenues of harmony and melody for
jazz, died at the age of 28.

Fortunately for the audience at Sun
Ra: A Joyful Noise, frozen aghast like
their compatriots in The Producers,
director Robert Mugge surfaced to give[...]ctive. “Sun Ra”, Magge explained,
“was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in

1915 and not, as he claims, on Saturn.” it
nee[...]nal
philosophy is accessible to just a few.
Here, in 60 kaleidoscopic minutes,
Mugge provides the gaudy, robe-
apparelied Sun Ra every opportunity[...]th an
audience he couldn't care is there or not.

The experience is not altogether
incomprehensible, at least in the short
term. As a jazz iconoclast this key-
boardi[...]y
advanced") and drummer James Jacson
(“Sun Ra, of course, showed me a whole
— another idea about[...]ntally, Sun
Ra’s communal family. Sun Ra revels in
his role as a visionary, linking Egyptian
mytholo[...]ystery."

Mugge has assembled a liberal
selection of Sun Ra’s music, interviews
with band members and Sun Ra's
lectures straight into the camera: “One
day a voice from another dimension[...]may as well practise
and be prepared for it", “in my music I
speak of unknown things", “They say that
history repeats[...]ition
because they don't know what they're
doing. The people who do know what
they're doing haven't pro[...]ay a reality”, '‘I want people to become
part of the magic myth and the magic
touch of the mythocracy — not
theocracy, or any of your other
‘ocracies’ and “They say that h[...]not my story. What's your
story?” Sun Ra lives in Philadelphia.

What Michelle Parkerson's “... But
Then, She’s Betty Carter" lacks in
technique is saved by its subject's
enthusiasm. The bebop singer's commit-
ment to her music and her zest for life is
infectious. Parkerson began her film in
1976, but only managed to complete it
shortly before the Festival: two of those
intervening years were spent searching
for[...]ing
conversation with Carter with material
filmed in a concert at the Cranston
Auditorium.

Betty Carter reveals hersel[...]to “My Favourite Things", or
when she discusses the album she
recorded with Ray Charles to “The
Trolley Song". Gladly the cuts are
relatively unobtrusive, allowing Betty to
seat offstage about a variety of subjects:
her scorn for black musicians who
abandoned jazz "to make a million
dollars” but of Motown and Soul, her
concern that black educators should be
helping black children learn from the
black singers of the '20s and '30s, and
the pride she has in her career —
"Today, it you’re a man, you've[...]If you're a woman you're
‘independent’ . . . in the old days it was
just ‘working hard'."

Her reminiscences of the early days of
bebop in Detroit, hanging out with
Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John
Coltrane, experimenting with the flatted
fifth and the scat, are as lively and as
anecdotal as if they w[...]ollowed up with
him appearing onstage with her at the
Cranston, tinkering on treble.

But Parkerson's film is clearly not a
biography, nor does it unravel the
"mysteries and innuendoes" about Betty
Carter whi[...]ed Parkerson to
her subject. it is a relaxed view of a
modest singer who, after a quarter of a
century of being in the vanguard of
bebop, can still say, ''I think i am a jazz
singe[...]icago's Maxwell
St market, for more than 60 years the
venue for sidewalk blues musicians. The
color and sound of the musicians
emerges from black-and-white
photographs of the area when it was
established as a market by Russian and
Polish immigrants in the early 1900s.
Then, with film clips from the '50s, stills
and a roving camera, the film gradually
charts the change from the time when the
only music heard was the cash register to
today when Jim Brewer, Playboy
V[...]Little Pat
Rushing, Floyd Jones, Carrie Robinson,
The Clarksdale Blues Band and many
more can be found.

Much of the flavor of the '20s and the
years since is recalled by the crusty
raconteur and blues musician Blind
Arvella Gray (who had his eyes shot out
in 1930 in an argument over a woman)
remembering how Charlie[...]aters among others have all
played on Maxwell St. The filmmakers
have also used clips from Gray's home
movies, taken on Maxwell St in the '50s,
and dedicated the film to him. Blind

Continued on p. 188

C[...]

1. /' E
loved

/' the the-

atre as a
child. We
had an English

teacher who, in-
stead of our English
lessons, allowed us to
produce whatever Shake-
speare play we were doing
at the moment. I used to
direct those.

Then I did my Arts degree,
majoring in drama and English.
When I finished, I just though[...]had done acting
lessons at university and gone to the
Independent, but I found the
theatre more and more
claustrophobic and interior, so the
idea of making documentary films
became very exciting.

I was quite naive going into it, in
a way. Even little news clips on
television seemed so interesting,
because it was much wider, out in
the open, and not that theatre
experience of going into musty
theatres in the daytime to rehearse,

Where did you start making[...]re was a place
that made documentary films
called the Commonwealth Film
Unit, and that I might get a jo[...]hey had
an arrangement about a certain
percentage of women —— like about
two girls to 10 boys — and a girl
had just left, so I got the job.

It doesn’t seem acceptable now,
but when I first started doing it I
liked the adventurous life. It
seemed great, constantly fin[...]ituations that you
normally wouldn’t get into.

The other thing that appealed to
me about film was the combination
of visual and intellectual elements.
My mother is an[...]have
something to do with that as well. I
thought the theatre was wonderful
and I always really liked w[...]vision. I can watch television or
go to films all the time.

136 — April CINEMA PAPERS

xws

tr “xx[...]Your first films were all docu-
mentaries. . .

The trap with documentaries is
that when you find a good story you
want to make reality fit the story:
you try to rearrange reality,
consciously[...]rific to
make a film about. You then try
and make the people be what the
idea is, which is unfair to the
people. But it is also unfair to the
good story if you can’t do itjustice.
It seems[...]to.

Documentary really works when
you have a lot of freedom and a lot
of footage, and you go in to find the
truth. But then the same thing
happens, because you get a.lot of
footage and start making up the
story in the editing. On the two
films I most enjoyed making, She’s

Meg Stewart.

W

My Sister and Slipway Dreaming. I
arranged the material to my own

vision. But you can't arrange[...]rst, it
inconveniences them a lot because
you are in their house for more than
they had ever realized,[...]maybe three
people’s experiences — yours and
the two actors’ — and then create
something more than just the
script. It is not using people.

I don’t think all documentaries
do that, but that’s one of the
reasons I wanted to work in drama.

When did production start on
“Happy Endings”?

We started rehearsals in the last
week in October and shooting in
November. My plan was to have it
finished by the end of last year, but
obviously we are a bit over that
now. I felt that if I didn’t shoot it
before the end of the year I wasn’t
going to make it. It has been going
on so long it would have been silly.
I have lots of other things to do.

Where did the idea for the film come
from?

It sort of started as a joke and
just expanded. I wrote the scene in
the middle to begin with, and then
wrote out from it. The scene is in a
motel room where two people
are watching Jean-L[...]once
done that myself. It is a great
combination of images. There is
something about a motel room and[...]working outwards, which I often
do when editing. In fact, I quite
often don’t start at the beginning.
As soon as I start using scisso[...]

Endings.

How do you feel about directing a
drama for the first time?

The work I did as a continuity
girl was useful because I worked on
a lot of dramas in one capacity or
another. So the actual form of it is
not too terrifying. The good thing is
you can get actors to do it again,
which you can’t in documentaries.
You coax actors in the same way
you coax people to give a good
interview[...]e able to communicate
with actors.

I found doing the test scenes with
the actors very stimulating and
demanding. When we we[...]What
does this line mean?” And I didn’t
write the script going into great
explanations ofof how you can shift the
balance. Stephen would come out
on top in the dialogue in one scene,
but, if you added one more line of

‘dialogue, Angela would come out

on top. Then it can change with the
performers — the intonation or the
strength of the actors changes it
again. The thing I was conscious of
in the script was trying to get that
balance between them.

The next thing I would want to
do as far as drama goes is write a
feature script, rather than direct
one. The difficult thing about
drama and films is that I don’t need
to be the general in feature
filmmaking. This means that I am
not as dedicated as a lot of male

film directors appear to be. I am
not interested in having to control
vast amounts of people. I can’t even
bear the notion of being a
ringmaster.

anything, and also money — but
the thing about directing that is
hard is I would want to be very
confident about my knowledge of
the script. I don’t think I would be
able to direct an episode of Cop
Shop at the moment, though if I
were shut in a room and told to
direct Cop Shop I suppose I
probably could. I guess I could tell
the criminals how they should be
interpreting the role. I’d feel uneasy
about directing the action se-
quences or choreographing fights,
but I guess I would get someone in
to choreograph the fight for me. I
guess it would depend on whether I
liked the script and how confident I
felt about the characters.

Ifl had an ideal, if I were going
to[...]mercial
but werejust slightly more true to a
sort of artistic intent. I think Bob
Rafelson is a good d[...]hn
Huston’s Fat City was my favorite

I can see the fascination of film.And then there areeven funny

saying, “Let’s shoot the procession
and let’s have three crews and a
helicopter” and all that stuff, but I
feel the good thing about drama is
that you can have a fir[...]eople. I have no
desire to shout at people and if the
first assistant is really good, he/she
can do all that. Then I can devote
my time to the actors and the
cameraperson.

But the responsibility always
comes back to the director, because
everybody wants to know, and yo[...]ike that means your whole life
is taken over, and the end product
may not be as you wanted it to be.

I[...]to be directing one feature film
after another. The other thing is, in
everything I have done, in radio
programs and in the sort of writing
that I would like to do, I draw on
living experiences. And if you are
working all the time, you can’t
have any living experiences. I
suppose you do [while making
films], but that gets back to the
unreality of theatre.

Do you see yourself directing scripts
w[...]do
— I would always consider

films like I Walk the Line, with
Tuesday Weld and Gregory Peck,
films that have something differ-
ent.

Lots of small films can be really
good. I do like the extravaganza
things, straight adventure if you
wa[...]an’s World’s Just
It and a Bit

1978 Not Just the Object
Joining the Mouse Race

1979 The Thompsons

1982 Happy Endings

But a lot of films that are _success-
ful seem quite small in terms of
actors and controllability.

I am not that obsessed with
drama. I can be really interested in
whatever project I am doing.
Veronica Soul stayed with me for a
couple of days and I got really
inspired by her. I wanted to make a
film using the sorts of things she
did; a documentary, but using
animatio[...]mething I would want to keep
doing. Perhaps it is the ultimate
sort of media exposure, which I
don’t even think about[...]Perme Hackforth-Jones and John Hargreaves: shades of Jean-Luc Godard. Happy Endings.

CINEMA[...]

From 1969 to 1974,
I was an actress at La
Mama in Carlton. I was
lucky to be a part ofthat scene.
While the actors at the Melbourne
Theatre Company were still speak-
ing w[...]we were
hypercritically and overtly Aus-
tralian. The first plays ofjack Hib-
berd, John Romeril, Alex[...]Williamson were performed
at La Mama, and I acted in the
original productions of Dimboola
and The Coming of Stork.

During this time I started direct-
ing pl[...]"1fth—year medicine, I ran
drama workshops with the inmates
of Larundel Psychiatric Hospital. I
had the courage to try anything. By
8 a.m. I had to be in the operating
theatre assisting the anaesthetist.
My lunchtimes were spent per-
forming at schools and factories
with the Portable Players. At night,
I directed rehearsals[...]an active, if undirected, time.

How did you make the transition
from acting to writing?

I was always[...]natural
candidate.

Improvization was a big part of
our rehearsals and street theatre,
and we were encouraged to write
our own dialogue and this de-
mystified the written word for me.

This was the time you wrote ‘Dream
Girl’ . . . ?

Dream Gi[...]y child-
hood and adolescence came tumb-
ling out of me with amazingly
accurate recall. It is a funny,[...]21 and now I have an
active dislike for this kind of
chaotic, emotional archaeology. It
was workshopped successfully at
the National Playwrights’ Confer-
ence in 1977.

How did you get into film?

My only experience in film up
until 1974 was small roles in local
productions like Brakefluid. I cut
my firs[...]por-
trayed a woman’s thoughts by a
succession of jump cuts and
increasing close—ups. It worked well

though, even though I didn’t think
of moving the camera. The effect
was like one of those cartoon book-
lets which, when you flip the pages,
create a continuous movement.

Why did you go into film after medi-
cine, rather than the theatre?

I always loved film, but it was a
matter of not having the oppor-
tunity. Although I acted in several
films and made one short comedy,
it wasn[...]first scriptwriting job.

How would you describe the kinds of
films you have made and the sort of
things you want to make?

Rivka Hartman and actors in Hartman '5 Consolation Prize.

Consolation Prize is a slapstick
comedy which I made as a vehicle
to act in. There was only one other
professional actor in the entire cast
of hundreds. On A Most Attractive
Man, I worked with[...]one
else’s script. I am particularly
interested in comedy, but I feel
open to any sort of film.

Is there comedy in “A Most
Attractive Man”?

Yes, it is a witty black comedy.

How did you find the script for it?

Through a chance meeting with

the writer in Darling St, Balmain.

Did your theatre background help in

At least two other people had tried film directing?

to get funding for the project, but it
was the team of Gilly Coote and
myselfwhich finally got the film off
the ground.

Would you a ain direct another
_ B
person’s script?

Yes. I am looking for scripts at
the moment. On A Most Attractive
Man, I enjoyed inter[...]ou approach a
subject from someone else’s point
of view.

Inin the writing
process. It would be ideal to work
on a d[...]When you say two or three writers,
do you mean on the same project?

Yes. Writing is the first stage in
filmmaking, which is a collabora-
tive process. W[...]as easy as
writing alone. This is especially true
of comedy.

What about the integrity of the
writer?

The work of the writer and
director overlap to some extent. It
is best for the integrity of the film
when director and writer have a
good understanding; but at some
stage the director takes over.

Directing film is totally d[...]der them-
selves filmmakers and be familiar
with the camera and understand the
reason for each shot. Dialogue in
film is more naturalistic than in
theatre where conventions allow
you to use poetic speech or even
didactic argument. Theatricality in
film is strange and usually doesn’t
work.

Perh[...]think my acting and
writing and everything I did in
theatre has been valuable exper-
ience. Consolati[...]A
Most Attractive Man is much more
advanced.

Who influences you?

My mother and grandmother
were devoted film buffs, and my
brother and I were regulars at the
local Saturday matinees. I thrived
on a diet of serials and B-grade
films on television. My grand[...]ntal trash and we would
always have a good sob at the
romantic parts. Now I love Fed-
erico Fellini’s La strada, Marcel
Carne’s Les enfants du paradis and
the Marx Brothers.

When I made Consolation Prize,
I studied the early silent comedies
of people like Buster Keaton and

experience in vaudeville which gave
them immaculate timing and a
great knowledge of how to make
people laugh. It is a pity that
Mabel Normand, who taught them
both about film, never achieved the
fame or the opportunity to direct.
They were total filmmakers[...]like Mae West, Jacques Tati
and Woody Allen, all of whom have
influenced me. Billy Wilder is a
director with the greatest sense of

humor. His films like Some Like It
Hot and One Two Three are the
funniest of all.

Have you met any resistance as a
woman working in film?

Film is dominated by men, like
the rest of society. I have had
assessors patronize me and lab
technicians treat me like an
imbecile. In each case it happened
because I am a woman. In general,
women are better to work with.
Their conditioning has trained
them to consider others, and that’s
the basis of working on a film.

Would you employ women on a film
in preference to men?

I have never been put in that
position. I think I’d treat each case
as it comes.

Was it accidental that most of the
crew for “A Most Attractive Man”
were women?

Yes; we simply chose the best
people for the job. It’s true that
these turned out to be mostly

Charlie Chaplin. They had years of women, and I think the shoot bene-

Rivka Hartman

Rivka Hartman Filmography

[975 Fantasy Sequence

I978 The Battle of Mice and Frogs
1979 Consolation Prize

l98l A Most Attractive Man

fited from this. However, the
person who did our lighting, Paul
Tate, is fantas[...]director is a man, too.

What do you think about the films
Australians are making at the
moment?

I think it’s an exciting time for
Aust[...]e
more contemporary stories about
real people set in the city — films
like Love Letters From Teralba
Road, Mouth To Mouth and Pure
S . . .. I love the Italian neo-realist
films like Bicycle Thieves, because
they are simple, emotional stories
of people in the city. I’d love to
make an Australian Midnight
Cowboy.

What sort of films would you
consider directing?

It is a deli[...]don’t much like neurotic films. I
am interested in stories about
survival.

If you were asked to dir[...]x 3”, what would you say?

I’d say I’d read the script. *

Carole Skinner, Grigor Taylor and Julie McGreg0r during a break in filming of Hartman 3 A Dorian (Grigor Taylor) and Fra[...]

women
directors
have a dif-
ferent way of
depicting charac-
ters and scenes in a
film. Even with a gutsy
director like Gillian Arm-
strong one can still tell the
film has been directed by a
woman. They seem to bring more
intimacy to scenes — maybe it’s
just a way of handling sensory
things. Certain male directors h[...]en
seem to have it more.

Also, female characters in their
films come across stronger. Many
male write[...]usually all
right when it comes to old women,
but the young ones are very often
stereotypes. Even Dosto[...]t nothings,
aren’t they?

How do you feel about the por-
trayal of women in Australian films?

I don’t think many contem-
porary roles have shown women in
any depth. Very often the actresses
have nothing to get their teeth into.
I[...]e scripts written
by women. I think this could be the
answer. We could do some really
good things.

There seem to be more roles for
women in theatre . . .

Even then there are very few
reall[...]ng part to
achieve this.

Is there a common theme in your
work?

The subjects very much dictate
what I do. Until now, the docu-
mentaries I have done have been on
artists. I am totally influenced by
the artists I try to represent. In a
sense, this feature film I am doing
[Emma’s War] will be the same. It’s
dictated by the characters and

by the time they live in. There
is a certain mood I want to
the 19403, the war. I don’t want it
to be a heavy psychological drama.
I want it to be a film that portrays
the period and gives you some
insight into the characters of the
woman and her two children, and
what the war does to them.

You have written the script. Will
you direct it?

Yes. I wrote it with my husband,
Peter Smalley, and at the moment
it looks as though I will be pro-
ducing it, too. The producers I have
approached here have all been to[...]out four years ago, and I took
what I had written in to Peter’s
editor at Andre Deutsch, who
thought it would make a good film.
We came home to Australia [from
Britain] and I sent an outline to the
Australian Film Commission.
Steve Wallace and the other
assessors said they liked the idea
and gave me a little bit of money —
I think $300 — to develop the treat-
ment. I thought that was very
encouraging![...]w did you go about writing it?

When we discussed the project, I
had talked about the idea of using
improvizations with the actors. But
when I started the treatment, I real-
ized I was never really going to get
a script together if the whole thing
were only going to be set out as
guid[...]so I started.

A few months later I went back
to the AFC and the assessors (a
different lot, of course) thought the
script was lousy, more like a novel
than a script[...]ve much to do with it,
because it’s not my sort of thing —
it’s all about women and adoles-
cent[...]started to edit it and
began to see possibilities in it which
he hadn’t observed before. Then we
decided to work on it together.

get, of

Last year I took the third draft to
London with me and showed it to
Alan Seymour and asked him what
he thought of it. He wrote me a
two—page criticism which was[...]nger,
without losing its integrity. I also
showed the draft to Sandy Lieber-
son who said he thought it[...]still with Warner
Bros?

Yes, but he is now with the Ladd
Company. He liked it, but he didn’t
think[...]eached an audience
anywhere, really.

I then took the draft to Greg
Coote at Roadshow and he said
much the same sort of thing: it was
too gentle, not dramatic enough for[...]At one point I thought, “God, we
are changing the whole concept of
the script and I will end up with this
psychological[...]to
do a Margarethe von Trotta—type
drama about the psychological dis-
turbances of two sisters. It’s meant
to be a film about the celebration of
life as seen by an adolescent, a film
which will try to point out, in a
subtle way, the stupidity of war.

Actually, I was able to take some
of the suggestions people made and
develop them without changing my
feeling for the script. We devel-
oped a sensory scene for the mother
which will give the actors a chance
to do interesting things. So I di[...]t’s become
much stronger.

Who have you thought of casting in
it?

I gave the script to Michele Faw-
don, who’s reading it. I want her to
play the part of the mother; it’s a
lovely part for her. She has to be a
lush and still retain the audience’s
sympathy. She is a warm, sensual
woman, very protective of her

children, very lonely — so she
drinks too[...]year? . . .
Yes, we hope so.

Does this depend on the money
arriving in time?

Yes. I have people who will put
money in providing the AFC come
to the party. I’ll know in the next
couple of weeks where I stand
there.

It appears you will be using a small
crew . . .

A very small crew; the absolute
minimum. I think that is going to
be bet[...]king with children,

and getting performances out of
them.

How confident are you about
directing acto[...]el-
lous directors. I worked with Jack
Clayton on The Innocents; I played
the part of Miss Jessel, the ghost.
One of the things he did when we
had a difficult scene — where he
had to do a close-up of me crying
— was to clear the set. There were
only Jack and Freddie Francis, the
lighting cameraman, and about
eight people instead of 80.

I think a lot of directors and
actors would work better that way.[...]ended being cut,
anyway. Truman Capote, who
wrote the script along with John
Mortimer and Jack, thought all the
close-ups of the ghost were too

~ ».".‘i§

Michele Fawdon ( in Cathy ‘.9 Child): to star
in Emma ’s War.

I had very good training in New
York at.the Theatre Studio with
Curt Conway and Lonnie Chap-[...]n things
that are going to worry me — keep-
ing the camera fluid and so on —
but once I start the first scene and
am into it, anything that looks
w[...]u have someone to handle
production things during the shoot?

Yes, I am going to have a very
good produ[...]ll be
directing, but I’ll have a lot to do
with the art direction, too. I have a
definite idea about the look of the
film. I.’ll have a design co-ordinator
working with me and looking for
props and everything, but the
overall decisions about the look of
the film will be mine. Brian Probyn
will be doing some tests
“and then we will decide which of
two very different kinds of period
look we will go for — either a soft,
warm, velvety look, or a strong
decorative look where the patterns
the shadows make will be

emphasized.

How long will the shoot be?

Four weeks, with four weeks’
pre-pro[...]camera, and we will also have to do
a fair amount of hiking up and
down mountains —— a lot of it is
being shot in a valley in the Blue
Mountains — so we don’t want to
carry heavy equipment anyway.

What will you do with the film when
it is finished?

The script at the moment is with
Roadshow, but I really see it more
as an art-house type film, maybe
showing somewhere like the Dendy
in Sydney. I don’t see with that
kind of budget it is going to be the
sort of film that Warners would be
interested in distributing. It
depends . . . if the acting really
takes off and it moves people, then[...]me why I haven’t
done a short film first. Well, the
answer is that it is so difficult to get
them shown and it seems an awful
waste of time, money and hard
work to do a film that is pr[...]g a feature length, one
can at least have a go on the market
place.

How did the 85-minute length
arrive?

Well, I was aiming at 90. It’s a
fairly spare sort of script and it

might take another five minutes
either way, depending on how much
time we devote to filming the land-
scape, which is an important part of
the film. It was originally con-
ceived as an hour—long film, but I
couldn’t achieve the slow kind of
dramatic build-up I wanted at that
length; it see[...]ends
on a high note, which is good:
Armistice Day in Martin Place. It
will be news footage because of our
low budget.

Do you think we should be making[...]udget films?

Yes. I feel that quite strongly. I

The fashion parade in L”/ylie Jessop 's Flamingo Park.

Filmography : C lytie Jessop

1970 The Stolen Child

1977 David Boyd: Return to Sfumato[...]1801-1878
1979 Flamingo Park

1982 Emma’s War (in preparation)

have always felt that budgets for
films are ridiculously high. It is just
a shocking waste of money. Even
with marvellous directors like Jack
Clayton, I was always aware of the
horrible waste of money; it just
didn’t seem necessary.

I think it is quite good to try and
stick to low budgets. A lot of the
world’s greatest directors made
their best films on low budgets. The
flops usually occur when they have
too much mone[...]it alarming to hear
people discussing their films in
terms of millions instead of con-
tent. And in certain areas one isn’t
taken seriously if one[...]phic —
Panavision, Steadicam, Dolby
sound . . . the works — then I
would love to have a go at some-[...]ve to do a
really expensive thriller —- not for
the money, but just to be able to use
this marvellous[...]t about “Flam-
ingo Park”, particularly about the
way you have sold it?

Columbia-EMI-Warner paid
3000 pounds ($5100) for the rights
for three years. That was just for
the British rights, but compared to
what Roadshow pai[...]lian rights —
it seemed very good for a short.

The AFC had loaned me the
money for the 35mm blow-up and
Roadshow and Columbia-EMI-
Warner used the 35mm negative.
Columbia-EMI-Warner must have
spent four times as much as I spent
making the film on the 100 prints
they had done. I wanted the film to
be seen by as wide an audience as
possible, so I was pleased with both
those sales, although in retrospect I
don’t think the money paid was
adequate. It has also been sold to
WNET-TV in New York for
$5000. Apparently it’s a good
stat[...]all a “high-
class station”! l’ve had a lot of
print sales locally: the National
Gallery in Canberra, the Art Gal-
lery of New South Wales and the
State film libraries have all bought
it. i[...]

to the second
3 Edition

". . . an invaluable reference for anyone
with an interest — vested or altruistic —
in the continuing film renaissance down
under . . .”

VARIETY

“The most useful reference book for me
in the past year . . .”
Flay Stanley SCREEN INTERNATIONAL

“The Australian Motion Picture Yearbook
is a great asset to the film industry in
this country. We at Kodak find it
invaluable as a reference aid for the
i"dU5"Y-” David Wells
Manager
Motion Picture an[...]arkets Division
KODAK

“. . . one has to admire the detail and
effort which has gone into the yearbook.
It covers almost every conceivable facet
of the film industry and the publisher's
claim that it is ‘the only comprehensive
yellow page guide to the film industry’ is
irrefutable.”

THE AUSTRALIAN

“Anyone interested in Australian films,
whether in the industry or who just
enjoys watching them, will find plenty to
interest him in this book.”

THE SUN-HERALD (Sydney)

“This significant publicat[...]ot only to professionals but everyone

interested in Australian film.”
THE HERALD (Melbourne)

“May I congratulate you on[...]ul publication to us, and
I'm sure to most people in, and outside,
the business.”

Mike Walsh HAYDEN PRICE
PRODUCTIONS

“The 1981 version of the Australian
Motion Picture Yearbook is not only
bigger, it’s better — as glossy on the
outside as too many Australian films try
to be an[...]ent as
many more Australian films ought to be

M

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

“l have been receiving the Cinema
Papers Motion Picture Yearbook for the
past two years, and always find it to be
full of interesting and useful information
and facts. It is easy to read and the
format is set out in such a way that
information is easy to find. I consider the
Yearbook to be an asset to the office.”
Bill Gooley
COLORFILM

". . . another good effort from the Cinema
Papers team, and essential as a desk-top
reference for anybody interested in our

feature film industry.”
THE ADELAIDE ADVERTISER

“An indispensable reference for anyone
working in or dealing with the Australian
film industry.”
David White
BROOKS W[...]carefully researched and
comprehensive directory of show-biz
Australian style, the Motion Picture
Yearbook is an indispensable guide — an
encyclopaedia of one of the most
progressive and exciting film industries

to emerge this century."
CLEO

The Third (1985) Edition

The Third Edition of the Motion Picture Yearbook will be totally revised
and updated.

As in the past, all entrants will be contacted to check the accuracy of
entries, and many new categories will be added to the Yellow Pages

directory and film personnel checklists.

The Yearbook will again take a detailed look at what’s been happening in all
sections of the Australian film scene over the past year, including financing,
distribution and[...]vals, media, censorship and
awards.

A new series of profiles is also underway and will highlight the careers of
director Peter Weir, composer Brian May, distribu[...]Anderson and actor Mel Gibson.

A new attraction in the 1983 edition will be an extensive editorial section
comprising three feature articles on aspects of Australian and international
cinema, including film financing, special effects, and a survey of the impact
our films are having in the U.S.

specifications

Size 85 (240 x 180mm) Design Extensively illustrated For release in September 1982.
Extent 430 PP (BPPTOX-) editorial text in mono, 2 and Deadlines for advertising material on[...]Detailed section
identification on tops and
sides of pages.

$19.95 lapprox.)

board. laminated[...]

the State of

the TI

ue to its visual nature and its roots,
one has to face the fact that cinema
is a contemporary artform. What is
more, it is a popular artform: like
all artforms of today, for the first
time in the history of western man, it belongs
to the people rather than being the sole prop-

erty of the monk, recluse, dilettante, idiot king
or the church.

rt was never of great interest to the
masses, and certainly wasn’t enter-
taining when it was a tool to present
them with icons for worship in the
golden age of Christianity, or when
paintings were commissioned to inflate the
importance of officialdom through portraiture.
Before the 18005, art had only been the property
of the people when artists made personal state-
ments or observations, which seemed to be the
privilege of the Dutch painters from Hierony-
mous Bosch through B[...]d within religious or
monarchic requirements: for the glorification of
man in the eyes of man, or man in the eyes ofhis
gods. The social/political illustrators of the 17th
and 18th centuries in Britain prove an exception
to this general rule (Hogarth, Rowlandson,
Gillray), but art was not freed from the hold of
the cogniscenti until the mid—l9th Century.

Conversely, art cannot exist in a world of its
own; it must be broadcast, shared and discussed.
The man sitting alone in a room of his house,
giggling uncontrollably, is not a come[...]made public. Consequently, it is worth a look at
the state of the arts in general — at a few
prevalent attitudes to it, and its relationship with
the rest of the outside world. It seems to be
pretty difficult for film to be accepted as an art-
form — the subject is badly taught at schools,
and only considered from the point of view of
criticism (after the event), or as a potential
trade. Peter Wollen makes this point in his book
Signs and Meanings in the Cinema (1969):

“. .. universities still continue to parade a
phantom of aesthetics, robbed of immediacy
and failing in energy, paralysed by the
enormity of the challenge that has been
thrown down (at the feet of aesthetics by
cinema).”

Yet it remains as simp[...]e messages that people leave behind
when they go. The theoretical study of film is no
more complicated than the study of painting or
music — the premises are the same as they
always have been —— and, as the photographer

CINEMA PAPERS April — 143

All the arts in the 20th Century are open
slather for anyone. Every aspect of mainstream
work that has developed since World War 2 has
been the result of innovation, experimentation,
writing and discussi[...]s to
principles and strictures that are as old as the
hills that some of the earliest western pictures
were carved into.

The creative world is richer and busier than
ever. Dozens of objects are tossed into orbit
around the earth each year. There are people
walking about with synthetic organs inside them,
but the artist acts like a gourmet standing in an
exotic delicatessen at a loss for what to buy for
his supper; whereas, in fact, we now have the
entire history of mankind, and his leftovers (or
“art”, if you like), as our palette and visual
vocabulary, to be used in any combination to
express whatever we feel in painting, music, film
or sculpture. What a splendid opportunity. Why,
then, do we live in such a creatively-sterile
climate? Some established artworks are as
popular as ever: deliver a bundle of Blue Boy re-
productions to a supermarket, and they will be
out the door as fast as electric drills in the week
before Father’s Day. The image is well
established —— very obviously, a picture of a
young man dressed in New Romantic style -
and it is uncontroversial. Why?

ut how about the commissioning,
designing and erection of that bright
yellow sculpture for the city square in
Melbourne? The piece is actually
called Vault, referring to the curved,
leaping pieces and the enclosed vault below
them. The piece was commissioned (by the city
council that was uprooted only shortly before
the sculpture was uprooted) to grace the bare
floor of the new city square. The reaction by the

press and public was strikingly similar to that of

a pack of hyenas, accustomed to having the vast
wastes of a desert to itself, coming across
an archaeology expedition encamped for the
night, setting upon them and eating every last
soul. Melbourne’s citizens ate all the more
ravenously when that “moral whore” and
champion of free thought and speech, the press,
disclosed the price that had been paid for the
sculpture.

The piece in question had to suffer the
indignity of being used as a graffiti board and to
wear its popular and bigoted title of the “yellow
peril”, before being moved to a small park by
the Yarra.

The council which ordered the piece from
Donald Swan must surely have approved the
design and costing of this inanimate object on
which so many people have vented their
aggression against the Asians and asserted their
determination not to look at anything that exists
without apparent function; yet the council did
not defend its democratic decision to com-
mission the work. Despite the fact that Vault is
by modern standards a conserva[...]cclaim for it
until he is safely dead and buried, the rarity of
the piece then increasing its value out of all pro-
portion to its worth.

I saw the commissioning, erection, dis-
mantling and resiting of Vault as one extended
“happening”, an almost perfect example of that
artform. I recognized the concept of collective
artworks (as a filmmaker must), and that the
function and duty of the artist is to reflect and
demonstrate the state of society of the time. I

144 — April CINEMA PAPERS

had not realized that Melbourne was capable of categorized, and attempts are made to

this kind of genius.

The poet Paul Eluard had something to say on
this subject when he described the work of the
Marquis de Sade:

“Written almost entirely in prison, the work

seems to be for ever in disgrace and banned.

The price that must be paid for its appearance

in the light of day is the disappearance of a

world where stupidity and cowardice bring

with them all of our misery.”

In a world where anything goes, we still try to
arra[...]. , v.

Above: Blue Boy — supermarket sales by the hundred. Below:
Vault, now in its new home of Batman Park.

rationalize the new as being a progression of its
precursor. However, it is impossible to think in
this linear manner without severe cerebral
hemorrhage, because man, and his creations,
exist in a continuum, not in separate, sequential
time capsules, like an eveni[...]ogramming.

e live with an ongoing de-

velopment of past ideas, helped

and hindered as we go by

genuinely new inventions or

discoveries, while the issues
under discussion remain the same: how can I
ensure eternal life?; thein
peace?; what is reality?; and when do we get
paid?, etc.

This continuum of previous ideas being
constantly re-developed lead[...]abels that
have derived from innovative movements of the
past are easily recognized when directly referred
to graphically, but the concepts encapsulated
within those images have al[...]ive consciousness. This is clearly
illustrated by the work of the surrealist
movement, whose main body of work under that
group heading was done between theof its normal
context (but not necessarily stating anything as a
result). In other words, the contemporary view
of surrealist ideas is linked with the paintings,
objects and photographs by the group — the
images they created —— rather than with the
poetry, writing and films which show clearly that
it was a movement of ideas and thoughts and
jokes rather than a visual movement, such as the
Post Impressionist school had been. However,
these ideas were expressed articulately in a

visual way, giving yet another frame of

reference.

But are we tau[...]so, although their physical
expression may not be in the particular styles
with which we are familiar. A painting does not
need to have drooping watches in it to belong to
this school of thought. In film, the absurdities
and horror of a ghastly wartime situation were
expressed as a surrealist notion by Francis
Coppola in Apocalypse Now at the point where
Willard comes across the bridge illuminated by
night like a fairground, the attendant soldiers
stoned off their faces as if they were at Mardi
Gras. Thejuxtaposition of these two concepts (21
battle and a street party) is, in essence, a
surrealist device to heighten what is a watershed
incident that leaves Willard alone for the
remainder of his journey up the river to Kurtz’
camp. The imagery cannot be found in the art
history books, but the notion can.

ast styles of art, and references to
them, are familiar to many film-
makers, but to quote from the past
makes no sense unless the essential
meaning of the original image is
conveyed. Quotation is a kind of shorthand
method of expressing a whole idea by showing
an image that[...]olizes, that

idea.
I have seen mentioned about a recent

Australian film that such and such a scene was
based on the work of painters Rupert Bunny and
Hans Heysen, say, and the final outcome of that
scene may well have been a photographic inter-
pretation of something that either of those two
artists once created. But unless this use of their
work imparted something extra to the
atmosphere of the period, or unless the whole
film had been constructed around their images,
little has been gained. _
Judging from my experience of “borrowing”
from painters, and it is always h[...]visual media, I would suggest that
to mention it in the first place was a mistake, as
visual research usually only serves to provide
inspiration to help the approach to mood or
lighting, for instance. On the other hand, an
entire sequence that was based on the work of
painters from the Impressionist school (e.g., the
final ballet in Vincente Minnelli’s An American In
Paris), works because it combines the visions of
10 artists, who had been working in Paris early

in the century, with the film’s ability to move the
dancers in and out of tableaux and scenes,
making the painted images even more expressive
by bringing them to life. That sounds rather
distasteful, but the effect is pure magic.

Designed by Irene Scharaff[...]riginally made from isolated,
deep-frozen moments in real life, but we are
allowed to enjoy the chorus girls kicking their
legs, and the customers frolicking in a
reconstruction of one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s
haunts, that shows both the life of the cafe and
the artists’ interpretations at once.

This is, per[...]familiar
with cafe society, but understandable to the most
naive of audiences once explained on film. In
this way, even the most abstract notions can be
communicated to vast sections of the public; by
integrating various familiar images and activi-
ties, in this case the atmosphere that generated
the original paintings is recreated, thereby also
promoting a better understanding of the work of
art itself.

This perhaps illustrates an earlier point about
advancing the cause of art and thought by use of
well-designed film images. Film is one ofthe few
forums available to the artist to promote new
concepts —— not to a select few peers or to the
academic world, but to almost the whole
English-speaking world. Take for example
mu[...]and musical notes that,
were they to be performed in a concert hall,
would cause most of the audience to walk out,
denouncing the music as modern garbage,
having no form and meaning nothing. The critics
would label it as avant—garde, daring, modern
jazz, or concrete music, using these tags to
discuss the work, instead of listening to it and
enjoying its free flight.

However, in the context of the film for which
the piece was composed, the music may have the
most extraordinary effect of raising the

Film Production Design/Part Two

audience’s emotions of fear, sorrow, suspense or
laughter because the music is as much illustrated
by the accompanying images on the screen as
those images are substantiated by the music. The
film has been strengthened by the sounds, and
the sounds made understandable. The sounds
which would have caused so much distress in a
concert have been accepted, and it is quite
possible that many people will buy a recording
of the music to play at home, being able to
visualize the images from the film as they listen
to it again.

he ability of most people to conceive

ideas visually is amazingly restricted,

unless it is done for them, despite the

fact that anyone can be taught to

draw, or play music, or fix a motor
car. It is just a matter of being shown how the
process is done with the tools, and (more
importantly) the principles of the concepts
behind these activities. Yet, there is an innate fear
of new ideas, as though they are conceived to
throw over old or established concepts: the
“stupidity and cowardice” of which Paul Eluard
spoke. Bringing an awareness of ideas, and
giving them visual form, is the role and duty of
the artist in society.

The artist looks at himself and his sur-
roundings in a critical manner, seeing the
ironies, injustices, shames and joys of life with
mixed feelings of scepticism, anger, laughter and
happiness, and then has to be bold enough to
present a visual image of this in public. This
relatively harmless member of society has tradi-
tionally been given a hard time by those who pull
strings and have any clout with the established
order. There is an awful fear that the people will
be upset by innovation. If, however, the joy of
the creator were shared by the patron of his art,
then that spirit would be automatically passed
on to the public. This obviously relates to the
fine arts as much as to film production.