Page Two
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Sunday, November 8, 1970
Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, November 8, 1970
music
cinema
I
Mehta:
By A. R. KEILER
Zubin Mehta conducted t h e
Los Angeles Philharmonic Or-
chestra last night in Hill Aud.
For a conductor who is still re-
latively young, even for young
conductors these days, he took
a great many risks program-
wise, playing as he did Haydn's
96th Symphony, S i x Pieces
for Orchestra, Op. 6 of Webern
and the Fourth Symphony of
Bruckner. It is a tribute to his
skill and maturity as a con-
ductor and to the great orches-
tra he has helped to develop
that his success was equal to his
venture.
His talent and musicianship
are apparent from the start,'
combining in about equal mea-
sure, technical control a n d
facility, and interpretive under-
standing. He does not allow the
technical distinction of his work
to' gain the upper hand, but
neither are his readings aca-
demic or bloodless. He has put
his temperameit and ability
where they belong, in the care-
ful and thoughtful musical de-
lineation of his repertoire.
And no less can be said of
his associates. Theirs is the
way a really first class orches-
tra should sound. There is pre-
cision, a quality of ensemble
that never gets lost in the size
of the orchestra or of the piece,
and eloquence of sound that is
far from usual. What is m o s t
striking is the cultivation of
Tempered skill
Hard-hat offensive:
texture of each section of the
orchestra at every dynamic lev-
el. The soft playing has weight
and character and the loudest
fortissimos have both refine-
ment and brilliance.
We heard first the Haydn
Miracle symphony, in a per-
formancq of stylistic awareness
and conviction. The careful
phrasing and articulation contri-
buted most to this, but so # did
the straightforwardness of Meh-
ta's reading. The workmanship
did not stick out, never called
attention to itself. For this re-
viewer there were a few miscal-
culations. The woodwind dou-
blings of the strings in the
Minuet were too hidden-they
are partners rather than dis-
tant cousins; and the oboe solo
in the Trio, although beauti-
fuly played, was a little to free
- too much rubato, as they say
- for my taste.
The slight pause in the upbeat
of the oboe solo is more effective
if it is not overdone, or done
less, e.g. on its last occurrence.
The last' movement went too
fast, I think - the two-note
phrases of the main theme tend-
ed to sound too much alike at
this speed.
The Webern Opus 6 ended the
first part of the program and
Mehta's performance was over-
whelming in its clarity and ex-
pressiveness. Expressive of what
would be difficult to say, but
that is true of any work, so I
suppose it doesn't matter. Again
there were details of interpre-
tation that could be raised,
mostly regarding tempo. The
first piece of this set was too
fast. As a result, the carefully
placed pauses which heighten
the effect of tone clusters or
interval fragments lost some of
their essential weight.
The Bruckner Fourth Sym-
phony, one of the composer's
shorter "symphonic boa con-
strictors," as Brahms once re-
ferred to them, closed the pro-
gram, and for this performance
I have only unqualified admira-
tion.
As we all know, it is no easy
matter to bring off a Bruckner
Symphony. It is honest and sin-
cere music, very organ-like in
its conception of texture and
sonority, and more often than
not quite loose in its formal
structure. Mehta judged the suc-
cessive climaxes of each move-
rhent with great care. and in
fact made it seem that there
was more inexorable logic in
this music than one generally
admits. The long square-like
themes sang out majestically.
There were no gimmicks, no
special tricks, in Mehta's inter-
pretation, only a sure shaping
and careful balance of the mu-
sical ingredients that make up
the rather personal Bruckner
idiom. The whole concert was, in
fact, a delight from every point
of view.
Just another
'Joe'?
BOWLING
FOOSBALL
BILLIARDS
TABLE TENNIS
UNION
University Activities Center
& Students International
FREEPORT, BAHAMAS
186.00
ROUND TRIP JET-
(4 HW.OPEN12:45
Program Information 662-6264 SHOWS AT 1, 3,5,;7, 9 P.M.
By NEAL GABLER
It wasn't too many years ago
that Marlon Brando's Terry was
caught in the crunch between
morality and money, or t h a t
Jimmy Porter struggled to as-
sert himself in an impersonal
society. The worker was hero
then - the confused battler,
the big man forced into a little
role, the man trying to domi-
nate the indominitable. This
was probably a vestige of the
naturalist notion of earlier days:
The poor are strong, and so-
ciety's discards, for all their
carousing, are deep down the
most mortal individuals, or, at
any rate, more moral than the
well-tailored big-wigs sitting on
the corporate throne. As hard
as some members of SDS might
try to revive this image with
talk of a student-labor alliance,
it's pretty clear to all but the
most myopic among us, t h a t
workers aren't quite as idealis-
tic as t h e y once might have
been.
That's why the fifties gave us
On the Waterfront and the sev-
enties have given us Joe. Joe is
the modern laborer. No longer
buffeted by economic pressures,
he's more comfortable from an
economic point of view t h a n
ever before. Despite inflation he
doesn't worry so much about
feeding his kids as whether he
can afford the motorcycle his
son wants. But though today's
Joes are materially comfortable,
they cling desperately to the old
values that everywhere seem in
dissolution. W h a t this society
needs is a little more discipline,
some more law and order, they
say. They feel threatened and
frightened by large, uncontrol-
lable a n d nonunderstandable
forces. With a little help from
the White House these forces
have become human. Spiro tells
us it's hippies, niggers, com-
munists, radical liberals who
are at the root of the problem,
and some people want to believe
it is that simple.
Joe Curran (Peter Boyle) sits
in the tavern and rails at so-
ciety:
"The niggers. They have kids
and get money for it."
"Social workers are nigger
lovers." d
"The white kids. They're ev-
en worse than the niggers."
"Chicago: a few kids got their
heads bashed."
"Twenty-nine per cent of all
liberals are queer. That's a
fact."
"Communists. Kids used to be
idealistic, but now they got
peace marches."
"Hippies. Sugar tit all t h e
way."
at State & Liberty Sts.
* MIDWEST *
PREMIERE!
1
They're all going the same
Screw America' way. I'd like to
kill me one of them - pissing
on America, fucking up the nu-
sic."
"I did. I killed one," sighs
Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick).
And Joe is nearly knocked off
his barstool. "You're joking.
Right? You're putting me on."
But Compton isn't joking. He
has just accidentally killed his
tripping daughter's freaked-out,
pill-pushing roommate. Joe un-
derstands. "I just talk about it.
But you did it. I wanna shake
your hand." And Joe Curran,
$160-per-week factory worker,
joins forces with Bill Compton,
$60,000-per-year ad executive.
At first Compton tolerates
Joe; as long as he keeps on Joe's
good side he needn't worry
about the police. But the bond
soon becomes something more
than convenience. When he's
with Joe, his guilt dissipates. He
begins to think he might have
been right in killing his daugh-
ter's boyfriend after all. Maybe
he really did do society a favor,
as Joe claims. When the ele-
gant Mrs. Compton groans after
a social visit to the Currans, her
husband shakes off her com-
plaints, "The crazy thing about
Joe is it's as if he shared in it,
as if he killed that kid."
W h e n Compton's daughter
runs away, the partners' search
leads to Greenwich Village and
an orgy, as Joe calls it. In the
final, apocalyptic scene, Cur-
ran and Compton invade a
country commune where their
Greenwich hosts have fled af-
ter absconding with t h e af-
sters' wallets; and there Nixon's
America has its revenge.
John Avildsen's steady direc-
tion tempers much of the exag-
geration here, but it is Peter
Boyle who is responsible for an-
imating the film. Boyle's Joe is
astonishingly effective, swag-
gering with a childish authority
that belies the hard hat's vio-
lence. Boyle, a familiar face on
TV commercials, manages an
inflated comic boorishness with-
out permitting broadness of
chacterization to intrude on the
broadness of the character.
Scenarist Norman Wexler has
also written s o m e effective
scenes, taking advantage of
Boyle's comic sense: one in
which the counter-cultures (for
the Right is really a counter-
culture too) literally become
bed fellows, and another, con-
trasting scene, in which the
Currans' counter-culture meets
Compton's main-stream Ameri-
canism over a Chinese dinner.
And then, of course, there is the
See JUST, Page 6
Dec. 27-Jan. 1....
Jan. 1-Jan. 7 .......
Feb. 26-Mar. 5.....
186.00
196.00
189.00
Christmas through EASTER
The FREEPORT INN becomes
a STUDENT RESORT
All Student Guests
2 hour long "Happy Hour"
every evening with
Live Music & Dancing
Unlimited free drinks
" SCUBA LESSONS
" HORSEBACK RIDING
" HONDA RENTAL
Open only to U of M students,
faculty, staff, alumni, and im-
mediate families.
2nd floor, MICH. UNION
UAC Travel
763-2147 or 769-5790
The Sidelong Glances
ofaPigeonIker
Meet Jonathan
The very day he graduated Princeton
he became a New York taxi driverl
(Then he met Jennifer)
AMERICAN COMEDIES FESTIA
Sun .Nov.8 - SABRINA
Dir. BILLY WILDER, 1952
Humphrey Bogart and William Holden as
millionaire brothers Competing for the
chauffeur's daughter, Audrey Hepburn, in
Wider's slyly cynical treatment of the Cin-
derella story. American style.
WEDNESDAY: Intruder in the Dust
7 & 9:05 ARCHITECTURE
662-8871 75c AUDItORIUM
*
U
T ! U
ARM/American Revolutionary Media presents
Two by Robert Rossen
A fragment of human energy
in, a barren Syrian desert
By GARY HUMMEL
For the past five years, Oleg
Grabar, professor of Islamic art
and archaeology at Harvard, has
been directing a series of ex-
cavations at Qasr al Hayr,
meaning "hunting palace," lo-
cated between Palmyra and the
Euphrates River on the flat,
barren expanse of Northern Sy-
rian desert.
With only forlorn scrub bush-
es and an occasional dust storm
to keep them company, Grabar
and his associates have discover-
ed that the smaller and larger
enclosures of Qasr al Hayr, con-
structed in the early e i g h t h
century, were not really a palace
at all, -hut made up a monu-
mental commercial center.
Within its impressive stone and
brick walls were all the neces-
sary components of a city - a
mosque, a series of pipes and
channels to carry water to cis-
terns and baths, olive presses, an
administrative center, and store-
rooms for food and military
equipment. Ordinary people liv-
ed outside the enclosures, trav-
eling to and from them to wor-
ship Allah or to trade goods
with visiting caravans.
According to Grabar, w h o
spoke here on last year's dig-
gings, "The scarcity of decora-
tion, the uniformity of the size
of the halls, the lack of grand
stairways, and the size of the
The Michigan Daily, edited and man-
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Class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Mich-
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sity year. Subscription rates: $10 by
carrier, $10 by mat
Summer Session published Tuesday
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tion rates: $5. by carrier, $5 by mail.
gateway which opens up the in-
ner area - all indicate t h e
structure, built at one time for
one purpose, was meant for pub-
lic life, not private. In provided
accommodation for camels and
traders and space for goods -
an ancient motel."
Near this mercantile struc-
ture, Grabar found a series of
carefully-built walls and sluice
gates to deflect and control
the waters of flash floods from
nearby mountains. A thirty mile
canal carried a regular supply of
water to the enclosures. The
excavation team also uncover-
ed stone gates, "with no sense
or purpose, as the 'area around
them was uninhabited. We
found no pottery sherds or trac-
es of repair."
"Most remarkable," said Gra-
bar, "was the discovery of a
bath due north of the enclos-
ures." Well preserved p o o 1s
faced with marble were found
as well as three hypocausts or
"hot rooms," and fragments of
wall paintings. The paintings,
whose. pieces showed traces of
bright floral designs and col-
umn shafts, were for Grabar
See A COMMERCIAL, Page 6
All the King's Men.
with Broderick Crawford,
John Ireland,
Mercedes McCambridge
"The rise and fall of a political
demagogue, obviously patternec
after Huey Long's tempestuous ca-
reer. has been fashioned by Robert
Rossen into a film of considerable
distinction and singular dramatic
force."
-Newsweek
btwn Liberty & William
Fri. Nov. 6
King's Men Lilith
8:00 p.m. 10:00 p.m.,
Sat. Nov. 7
King's Men
7:30 p.m.
Lilith
9:30 p.m.
Liith
with Jean Seberg, Warren Beatty,
Peter Fonda
Lilith, in ancient Babylonian my
tholocv, was the female embodi-
ment of 'total "evil"-and free-
dom. In Robert Rossen's film
based on J. R. Salamanca's gothic
novel, she, "wants to leave the
mark of her desire on every living
creature in the world."
contribution $1.00
Sun. Nov.8
Lilith King's Men
7:30 p.m. 10:00 p.m.
331 Thompson
What
is
Circle
K?
A glass bottle,
(ca. A.D. 800)
Iv
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TONITE-ONE NIGHT ONLY!
4
.,.
I,
CREDIT BY
EXAMINATION
FOR ENGLISH
COURSES
Examinations
to be given
Nov. 20th and 21st
SEE
Professor Mullin
TO REGISTER
444 Mason Hall
Deadline Nov. 12th
Alice's Restaurant - Alice Lloyd Hall
6:45, 8:50, 15:55 p.m.
BURSLEY HALL
Shown at 7:00 and 9:15 p.m.
- I
CIRCLE-K is a campus and
f
e .
.
EMU University Activities Board
I
community SERVICE organization
If YOU would like to get involved in:
--Working with disadvantaged children
--Dealing with ecological problems in the Ann Arbor area
--Restoring a run-down playground in the community
--Entertaining hospitalized children
--Raising funds to support campus and community service projects
If YOU would like to:
--Meet people
--Have fun
-Spend an hour or two a week helping someone else
COME TO OUR
A AA C'CA A r FIri^
NOVEMBER 8--8:30 P.M.
at Bowen Fieldhouse
r,
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