Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY ,Wednesday, January 29, 1969 Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Wednesday, January 29, 1969 arts festival cinema East Bound Mound: Kick out the jams Zita: Retracing old themes By W. REXFORD BENOIT Not often these days do we get to see high-energy stuff like the East Bound Mound for free. Too often we sit around list- ening to low-energy pop-rock junk, ingesting low-power dope that cost an arm and a leg, and pondering all the bullshit that's going down these days. OK, friends, if you saw the East Bound Mound last night,, read no further. Words are usually an adulteration of expe- rience. That's the lesson of to- day. Double for arts reviews and political commentary. After all, God didn't give Wil- liam F. Buckley, Jr., the gift of vocabulary. It was merry, prankish Salvador Dali who did it. On, to the East Bound Mound. It (they? she? he?) is com- posed of musicians from here- today, gone-tomorrow Ann Ar- bor bands like The Fox and Long Island Sound, and four talented actors from the speech department. (All four - Jim Hosbein, Bob McGill, Gilda Rattner, and Mound mentor John Slade -- will be in the '69 Musket produc- tion of "Camelot." See them.) Last night the format was, roughly, music alternating and sometimes interacting with the players' improvisations. The first half lumbered along, troubled 'by sometimes lousy music. Gilda did a great drama- tic reading, prefaced by her copious laughter, of the Beatle's "Why don't we do it in the road." Now that's funny. (In the second half, she sang it. That's twice as funny.) McGill did a bit as a poli- tician hung up in cliches that have,' through the ages, m ad e men brave enough to go to war, e.g., "We will fight them on the beaches . . . ", constantly interrupting himself to blurt another, better valorous word. The band played an imita- tion of Butterfield's arrange- ment of "Get out of my life, woman," poorly, did another song and quit for intermission. The depressing thing about music that isn't quite good enough it that it makes us feel artificial boundaries that don't really exist. If, for example, you're into the MC5, you know the poten- tial liberating force of good music. However, the band got it to- gether for the second r half. Slade had explained during the intermission that the drummer was not a regular and didn't know the arrangements. First off, Hosbein lip-synch- ed and danced to old rock-and- roll music recorded by (I think) the Four Seasons. That's fun- ny, if not an original idea. A hard act to follow. And if McGill hadn't boldly followed it, we would've' been forced to sit in an emptyf ball- room and entertain ourselves, so McGill followed it. He played with an imaginary bird, capturing it in his fist and pulling off first the feathers and finally the legs, popped it in his mouth and ate it. Now that's hilarious. More mediocre music. This time a copy from the Cream's pop smash "Sunshine of your love." Then McGill and Hosbein did a religious argument between a dogmatist and a doubter, who By DAVID LLOYD Aunt Zita is giving a piano lesson' in her comfortable pic- ture-bestrewn apartment. The sirens blare out: noontime, and the lesson is over. She begins to prepare lunch, but suddenly the sirens signal a new mean- ing: an air-raid, a stroke. Yel- lowed filmclips of death and destruction and the Spanish Civil War flash and fade in- to the droning meow of a Siamese cat. Such is the environment which gives Zita leaving t h e Campus today, its impetus; the event which Annie, Zita's niece, confronts as she enters the apartment. The film makes the fair as- sumption that coming to terms with experience is intensely personal, or, from the aud- ience's points of view, that sym- pathy is not empathy. In this context, we follow An- nie's coming to terms with life, but we follow, we never iden- tify. The experience w h i c h Director Robert Enrico weaves out of Annie's becoming c o n - tains all sorts of associations with other films. The movie's timeless quality as well as Annie's actions sug- gest the abstruseness of Belle du Jour. Her concerns are sim- ilar in nature to the kind of honest development of Rachel,, Rachel. The photography, evokes, at times, the redolent beauty of Elvira Madigan. But the dynamism A n ni e creates is all her own. Joanna Shimkus plays a vigorous and restless Annie, whose diffidence somehow generates a keen self- awareness, divorced from t h e nagging question of why. She slides from emotion to emotion, from telling her mother "I can't leave. She' needs me," to telling a cop "I'm fed up with good people." Miss Shimkus' stiff acting gradually eases in- to the grace, and maturity which characterizes Annie at the end. And the movie has a curious way of luring the viewer into Annie's development. The bed- room scene with her base-fiddle playing, car-racing, cavalier LII captures all the coyness as well as beauty, all the tension as well as acceptance, which that act symbolizes. We reminesce. Waking up. Annie steals away from her lover's apartment. She imagines her dead Aunt Zita: she realiz- es her lost virtue. She is play- ing . hide and seek with her aunt, at the country-house, this time as a child. : In spite of the buoyancy Miss Shimkus invests in the role of Annie. the film itself, in theme and development, has the po- tential of becoming life any other sentimental cliche on the emergence of identity. Fortunately, Director Enrico comprehends this problem, and seeks a technical solution: new camera angles and perspectives with which t'o impart a kind of restiveness parallel to Annie's own. The pace of the film is varied as well, using slow-mo- tion to enhance Annie's dreams. A unity is imposed on Annie's sequence of experiences by the intermittent piano and guitar music, as well as by the direc- tor's ability to blend images, as when the camera moves uncon- sciously from the ticking of a metronome to the heavy breath- ing of Aunt Zita. Such effects augment the original screenplay by Lucienne Hamon. By avoid- ing sentimentalism and keep- ing Annie's pursuit of her self moving at a suitable briskness, the audience remains absorbed. The difficulty of the film, is, perhaps, that it relies too much on Annie's self-indulgent and existential frolic. Although the other roles are well-cast, they remain cardboard figures throughout the film. Only Aunt Zita, played by Katina Paxinou, conveys through her homely red-knitted shawl and portly stature someone who could elicit the deep sense of attachment which obviously existed between Annie and herself. Unfortunate- ly, her role is relatively small. The other characters appear to be pawns who mingle but never touch Annie's life as she bounces from one to the other in her diffident but determined fashion. Bernard Fresson, the lover, never takes the cue from Miss Shimkus and never re- sponds to her more and more easy and carefree acting style. Somewhere, somehow, sub- stance seems to be lacking. It was fun to follow Annie around; but director, writer, and actress combine to present only the il- lusion of something significant. In any event, what it lacks in metaphysics it produces in an abundance of spontaneity, and its message, a plea for joie de vivre, .emerges through the ef- fervescent character of Annie. CINEMA Ii THE PAWN BROKER ROD STEIGER 7-9 P.M. AUD. A, Angell -Daily-Larry Robbins left the dogmatist finally doubt- ing, and Slade at once began to sing another Butterfield thing, "I've got a mind to"give up liv- ing." It was magical. The two some- how fit and caused the synaps- es from ear to eye to goose- bumps. Slade did everything well. All night. But especially he sang well. I liked his phrasing in "I've got a mind" even better than Butterfield's. land rap ice winner of the Tomkins Award, i But tle best was yet to come. What was lacking in part in the earlier performances - co- hesive music and smooth inter- actions between acting to music -came together in a remark- able finale. Called "On the Rack," it was a composite of Slade written lyrics and a piece from Shake- speare's "Othello" set to taste- ful and emphatic music. Slade sang it, mesmerizing us. He had remarked earlier that it was one thing the band hail carefully rehearsed. Yeah! r-- I The I.C.C. Presents Black poets to rea M8i poets and twi IKTITAF Xavier Nicholas describes his poetry as "giving a beat to my breathing-to the rhythm, of my life as a Black man in America." This rhythm in Nicholas' life along with that of three other Black poets will be presented in a reading tonight at 8:00 p.m. in the League Snackbar. Nicholas, who presently writes poetry and teaches Afro-American history in Detroit will read frbm several of his works and will parti- cipate in a discussion on black people, poetry and his writings. The Poetry Night presentation, part of the Creative Arts Festival will also feature Naomi Long 'Madgett, an educator who has long fought for the inclusion of black writers in school texts. In a review of her latest book, Star by Star, Mrs. Madgett was called "a natural poet-vigor- ous, inventive, true."' Dudley Randall, the dean of Detroit's black will read several poems based on "the disturbed feelings and the violent events of our disturbed and violent times." Randall founded the Broadside Press, which publishes individually designed "broadsides" of single poems by Black poets. His work has been translated into three languages and some of it has been set to music. Ahmed Alhamisi has been described as a spiritual poet-artist, aquarian, and vegitarian. Among his literary works are blacks SPIRITUAL GoDs and & on this night. Currently on the editorial staff of several black poetry magazines, Alhamisi is also writing an autobiographical novel. Although the focus of the evening will be on the black poets, students are encouraged to read their own poetry: Admission is free. =m m m, i A free film Series on THE RELIGIONS OF MAN A National Educational Television Film series prepared under the direction of HUSTON SMITH, Professor of Philosophy, M.I.T., author of RELIGIONS OF MAN (available in paperback) m w , TONIGHT & EVERY WEDNESDAY A HOOT come do your thing and sing-a-long 1421 Hill St. FOX EASTERN TEATRES FOX VILLAGE 375 No. MAPLE RD.769-1300 STARTS TODAY LIMITED ENGAGEMENT HILL AUDITORIUM JAN. 28-FEB. 1 Hinduism: Part 2 Hinduism: Part 3 FEB. 4-9 Buddhism: Part 1 Buddhism: Part 2 FRIDAY EVENING, FEB. 7 The above listed films will be shown at the followipg places and times: Tuesday 7:00 Wednesday 3:30 7:00 South Quad Lounge Newman Center, 331 Thompson St. Multipurpose Rm., UGLI ONE WEEK ONLY $2.50---$2.00---$1.50 Tickets on sale at Hill Aud. FREE FOOD I SATURDAY- CUSTER'S LAST BAND a massacre in progress ANDY STEIN and BILL HINKLEY Don't miss this Ann Arbor first M G M presents the John Frankenheimer- Edward Lewis Production of the fixer Based on the Pulitzer Prize- winning novel by Bernard Malamud. I Thursday Sunday Box Office, 8 A.M.-5 P.M., Feb. 3-7 7:30 Ecumenical Center,'921 Church St. 5:45 Y.M.C.A., corner 4th Ave. and William OFICE OF RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS, 2282 SAB 11 . i ! , ,. , , f FIND YOUR OWN THING -ji I I k /" f/f ,, ! / { fi'( . '\ __ ~ j (1 i' 1VK ,<.- 3 t . f ; , on the DAILY BUSINESS STAFF see JANE or SUE at 420 Maynard ___ - -___- - _ _ presents THE ALVIN AILEY Metrocolot MON.-FRI. 7:00-9:20 SAT.-SUN. 1:45-4:15-6:50-9:0 1, I AMERICAN DANCE THEATRE III II SUMMER INSTITUTE IN ISRAEL JUNE-AUGUST, 1969 11 I ANN ARBOR PREMIERE THURSDAY Mad Marvin Presents at the Vth Forum Thurs., Fri., Sat., Sun.-11:00 P.M., Separate Admission ANDY WARHOL'S "THE CHELSEA GIRLS" (with dual projection) . to tour the country with a complete program of sightseeing and enter- universities- THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY, JERUSALEM BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY, TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF HAIFA This program will last approximately eight weeks, divided into six weeks of study and two weeks of touring. The University of Michigan will grant up to six semester hours of credit to those admitted to the Institute, provided, of course, that they meet the academic standards. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 8:30 in Hill Auditorium I IN COOPERATION WITH THE CREATIVE ARTS FESTIVAL II T14F COST 1S X960_ and includes: I 1 11 TU ' ~4QA ~ ;r~~.I II I 11 -.,L