Sunday,' February 18, 1973

I HL MICHIGAN DAILY

Page Three

Sunday1 February 18, 1973 IHLMIC2HJGAN L)AILY Page Three


Re flecting a moment
on Frank Capra


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Frank Capra

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Ritt Film

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UAC-DAYSTAR PRESENTS
2 JAZZ GREATS
IN ONE CONCERT
herbie
and special guest star
f red die.
hubbard
SAT., FEB. 24
8 P..M.--HILL AUD.
$4.50-4.00-3.50-2.50
reserved seats on sale
MICH. UNION
11-5:30 Mon.-Sat.
and Salvation Records

... this week in preview
.$. . 5 ..,.. ......' .. ....
Passionately into jazz? Well, this is your weekend, when UAC-
Daystar will present Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard in concert
Saturday night at 8, Hill Aud.
Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Hancock first be-
came interested in piano at the age of seven - within four years he
was performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. After graduat-
ing from Iowa's Grinnell College, he returned to Chicago where he
began playing with Donald Byrd. By 1963, he was playing with Miles
Davis.
Today, at the age of 32, Herbie Hancock has to his' credit com-
posing the soundtrack for Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Blow-Up," the
success of his own group formed in 1968, and being named the num-
ber one jazz pianist on the 1972 annual Down Beat Readers Poll for
the fifth consecutive year.
If folk music is your interest, you can catch singer-songwriter
Paul Siebel at the Ark tonight. Hailing from Woodstock, New York,
Siebel has had his songs recorded by such notables as David Brom-
berg and Bonnie Raitt. Coming up this weekend at the Ark is Joe Hick-
erson, an authority on folklore who works for the Library of Congress.
An evening with Henderson promises lively group singing and a
wealth of information about folklore.
Music lovers of a classical sort, should note that the Ann Arbor Can-
tata Singers and Chamber Orchestra will present a chamber concert
featuring the music of Stravinsky and Brahms this afternoon at 4 in
the University Reformed Church, E. Huron at Fletcher. Also, the
University Musical Society brings to stage Chilean pianist Claudio
Arrau this Friday at 8:30, Hill Aud.
If you're finally coming down from last week's fantastic Frank
Capra Festival, take heart - this week launches the 1973 Creative
Arts Festival, featuring films and guest appearances by Stan Van-
DerBeek. Famous for his multi-projection events and the develop-
ment of the "movie-drome" (a 180 degree environment of projected
images), underground film-maker VanDerBeek has made animated,
collage and computor graphic films.
Scheduled events this week begin Tuesday when VanDerBeek will
present a discussion-screening at 3, Aud. 3, MLB and a multi-screen
image event at 8:30, Natural Science Aud. Wednesday at 3, he will pre-
sent a discussion-screening entitled "Expanded Cinema at the RC Aud.
The Festival will continue through next week.
As usual, quantity and quality mark films shown locally this week.
There will be a special showing of Angela: Portrait of a Revolution-
ary, Wednesday night, at 8 in the UGLI Multi-purpose room. Follow-
ing this, Mark Green, Mariano Bianca representing the Ann Arbor
Student Movement, and Dr. Richard Kunnes will be speaking on
"Academic Repression." Tonight, you canucatch Forman's Loves of a
Blonde presented by Cinema Guild at 7, 9:05, Arch. Aud. and Cinema

By BRUCE SHLAIN
Nicely punctuating the success
of the Frank Capra Film Festi-
val at Cinema Guild was Mr.
Capra himself. His visit to the
University included a press con-
ference, a reception in the Mich-
igan League (in the Hussey
Room, no less), several discus-
sions in film courses, and ap-
pearances at the Architecture
Auditorium after two of his films.
My first meeting with Capra
s was on a Saturday. After having
seen Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,
You Can't Take It With You, and
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
during the week, I was more
than a little eager to meet the
man behind it all. I had not
Daily Photo by DAVID MARGOLICK exactly planned on meeting my
first "director of note" at the
LSA Building. But, assuring my-
II's offering of the Marx brothers' A Day at the Races at 7, 9, Aud. A.
Check out the Daily's Culture Calendar each morning for specific
schedules for the remainder of the week.
Theatre-wise, this week brings an Ann Arbor Civic Theatre pro-
duction of Anouilh's Thieves Carnival which opens Wednesday at
Mendelssohn and runs through Saturday and a RC Players produc-
tion of Williams' Something Unspoken and Ionesco's The Lesson which
runs Friday and Saturday in RC Aud.
One of Anouilh's earlier works, Thieves Carnival is best classified
as a musical farce set in Paris of the 20's. The story of three thieves
-an 'old pro' and two apprentices-who almost by accident crash the
estate house of a woman and her two attractive, rich, young nieces, the
play is indeed a carnival.
The Lesson, definitely Theater of the Absurd, is a comedy about
a professor who, while tutoring a' student, goes into a frenzy. Watch
for a very interesting surprise ending here. Typically Williams, Some-
thing Unspoken, is set in the South. A drama about the tensions and
strain of a relationship between an elderly, faded aristocratic woman
and her companion, the play is cerebral with very little action.
For those of you out there who are into dance, the University
Dancers will present works by two internationally known choreog-
raphers in their annual dance concert this weekend at the Power Cen-
ter. Evenings performances on Friday and Saturday at 8, will feature
"Passacaglia and Fague in C Minor" by modern dance pioneer Doris
Humphrey and "Aubade" by Dutch choreographer Lucas Hoving.
"Bullshot," a light new work by Elizabeth Weil Bergmann, Dance Co-
ordinator, will also be shown along with three new works choreographed
by students ... . "Scooch (or some May Like to Walk It)" by Eva Ja-
blonski, "Always" by Sue Schell and "Maurice Sings . . . the Black-
bottom Blues" by Alvin McDuffie. Matinee performances on Satur-
day and Sunday at 2:30 will feature two works by Vera Embree along
with "Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor", "Bull Shot", and "Scooch."
* * *
University Musical Society presents pantomimist Marcel Marceau
today. The man is an artit extraoidinaire in interpreting the human
condition, both comic and tragic. Tickets to his performances have
been sold out for weeks (if not months).
.w.
For poetic souls, University professor Donald Hall will read his
poetry this Thursday at 4:10 in the UGLI Multi-purpose room.
In the world of art, Union Gallery presents photographs by Greg-
ory Campbell. Forsythe Gallery is displaying works of Alejandro
Arostegui, a major Nicaraguan painter who with his friends is initiat-
ing an effort to rebuild a culture center in Managua, Nicaragua that
was devastated in an earthquake there last December. The Gallery
charges a one-dollar minimum donation toward the reconstruction
project. An exhibition of graphics in conjunction with Martha Jackson
Gallery of New York is showing at the Lantern Gallery. The prints
date from the early 1960's through 1971. James Brooks, Domoto, John
Hultberg, Paul Jenkins, Bruce Conner, Lowney, Clayton Pond and
Mark Tobey are some of the artists whose works are being shown.
Pyramid Gallery presents Igor Beginin, his watercolor and oil paint-
ings. Beginin is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Eastern
Michigan University. Chez Jacques Art Gallery displays modern,
original prints from Paris. Some of the artists are Assadour, Brillant
De Butler, Fitromann, and Mojong.

self that fate often works in
mysterious and occasionally ob-
noxious ways, I headed towards
the American Studies Office with
great expectations indeed, but
also a few trepidations.
The trepidations centered
around my worries of whether
the man would match his movies
-when I looked into his face,
would I see the sublime mixture
of naivete and cynicism that pre-
vents his old-fashioned style from
becoming anachronism? Or would
he be an anachronism himself?
After all, he had once been the
head of the Motion Picture Aca-
demy that organizes the Acad-
emy Awards, and any aesthete
worth his saccharinle k n o w s
how unhip Oscars are.
I was also made a bit wary by
leafing through his autobiogra-
phy, The Name Above the Title,
the previous night. In the book,
Capra portrays himself more as
a supreme wheeler-dealer than
as a director. The book is full
of knock-down drag-out scraps
with studio heads, scraps for di-
rectorial freedom which were
won by Capra primarily because
of his dogged refusal to com-
promise. Actually the book is
somewhat of an arrogant docu-
ment.
But Capra was neither ogre nor
anachronism. His geniality was
of the type that comes from be-
ing successful and aging grace-
fully. Far from looking back on
his films with a "those were the
days" attitude, he seemed as
close as ever he could h a v e
been to the attitudes in his films.
It is not as if something like

Pavlo Hummel

. 0 .

the Vietnam outrage could shake
the Capra outlook - it remains
something of the bug-eyed im-
migrant, swept off his feet by the
lyrical American notion of free-
dom, and yet tempered by a full
awareness of its dark spots. For
Capra, the more things change,
the more they stay the same, and
there is still that hope for the
flicker of human morality that
turns the tables so completely in
many of his films.
To hear Frank Capra talk about
his films, I could hardly believe
he had made them thirty years
ago. He talked so vividly, in a
stream of anecdotes - how the
replica of the Senate was re-
built for Mr. Smith, how Jimmy
Stewart's throat was lined with
a vile mercury solution to simu-
late the hoarseness of a 24-hour
filibuster, how Jean Arthur had
to be photographed from h e r
left side almost exclusively,
since the right side of her face
was not "star quality" . . . And,
of course, had he the chance, he
would not change a thing in his
films.
He did a lot, of talking whils
he was at the University, and he
seemed to relish most of it, even
the reception at the League,
where the spiked punch w a s
flowing rather generpusly and he
had to field such gyms as ques-
tions about why there were no
blacks in Meet John Doe.
Still, he seemed to be enjoy-
ing himself immensely, espec-
ially at the Architecture Audi-
torium where he could let the
films speak for themselves, and
watch the standing ovation, the
proof that the films sometimes
labelled as "Capra-corny" h a d
stood the test of time. In a lot
of ways, Mr. Capra was watch-
ing us as closely as we were
watching him. And both parties
were impressed.

...not so bad

By GLORIA JANE SMITH
Arts Editor
In yesterday's Daily, Mitchell
Ross reviewed the University
Players production of The Basic
Training of Pavlo Hummel, which
closed last night. His caustic
comments came down hard on
those involved-especially those
unknowing souls who selected an
antiwar script months ago, not
realizing that the war might be
in low gear by the time February
15, 1973, rolled around.
While it's not my policy to cen-
sor those who review for the
Daily's art page, it is a policy
to ensure that a substantial case
is made for points of view pre-
sented. Mitchell Ross failed to
discuss adequately the production
itself, choosing instead toecenter
his attention on script selection.
So I felt it only fair to see the
play myself last night and to dis-
cuss what I saw on stage.
Perhaps University Players re-
tains a reserve cast and director
who emerge for such "second
screenings," because certainly
the people I saw on stage last
night could not have been around
opening night to entertain Mr.
Ross.
The story of Pavlo Hummel-
who goes through the regimenta-
tion of basic training, finds his
first good lay in Nam, and finally
dies-is decently presented. Our
sentiments are adequately twist-


1

"A bewilderment of riches...demands to be seen!"
-Newsweek
"One of the more chilling episodes among
fictional treatments of a woman's life and love!"
New Yak Times
"WILDLY FUNNY!"W el St. Journal
"BRLLANT!".- bO
"On6 of the best films of the I stte'* e
"Dazzling... Stunning... Ro t r s,..! Np
"Devastating and riveting!" '
WEDNESDAY
Modern Language Aud. 3
7:30 and 9:30 p.m.
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LOTS OF FOOD

ed from outright laughter to an
uncomfortable uneasiness.
Even if the war is over,
there is still that powerful dis-
gust that comes when we ques-
tion the validity of war, any-
where, at anytime. There is still
the pang of regret that autj-
cratic institutions - training
schools, corporations, educational
systems-exist to make men and
women say "Yes Sir!"
The language is obscene and
sex is dealt with in blatant
chauvinist terms. This may have
offended some, but then people
-especirally those trapped in sit-
uations of oppression - do fight
back with every bit of filth they
can handle., And this is a real
play.
There was some mediocre act-
ing, but there was also some
extremely good characterization,
especially of Sgt. Tower by Andre
Hunt, of Kress by James Z.
Grenier and of Mickey by Gary
A. Klinsky.
In the role of Pavlo, John
Copeland does a fairly decent
job of portraying the -young,
naive, do-good so4ier who has
volunteered to help his country,
although I did find his often
affected accent bothersome at
times. His whore Yen, played
by Nancy Blum, comes off as a
bit affected, again with a bother-
some accent-but she is also
movingly simplistic and accom-
modating.
Director David Kelley blocks
and paces the show well, keep-
ing the action moving constant-
ly from stage left to right and
back again. I liked soldiers run-
ning through the aisles-you felt
their presence. He could have
dredged out more emotion to-
wards the end, but the comic
moments were excellently staged
and executed.
All-in-all The Basic Training
of Pavlo Hummel was a play
that should have been seen by
many.
Have a flair for
artistic writing?
If you are interest-
ed in reviewing
poetry, and music.
drama, dance, film,
or writing feature
stories a b o u t the
arts: Contact ArtF
Editor, c/o The
Michigan Daily.

A head
rof his time

SAT. /SUN.
Loves of a Blonde~
Dir. Milos Forman, 1965. Czechoslovakian;
subtitles. An everyday love story with credi-
bility. Famous example of the recent East-
ern European "New Wave."
Architecture Aud. 7 & 9 $1.00

.- __ .. T... _._. .._ ..._....__ _.__. _ __ __ __ __ _ __ ______ _ __ __ __.

COLOR .IGP
SCREEN PLAY BY
Firesign Theatre
starring Country Joe and the
Fish, The James Gang, Doug
Kershaw, New York Rock En-

......... .

J~.:v:.~s.>.I I .ifH~~ T AII-IIH

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