Tuesday, April 3, 1973
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Page Three,
Tuesday, April 3, 1973 THE MICHIGAN DAILY PQge Three
!!!!!!!!!
CONGRATULATIONS-Well, it's been a fine year for The
Blind Pig, and this past Sunday, April 1st, friends of the
Pig celebrated the first anniversary of the bar's open-
ing. WNRZ-FM and Cable TV Channel 3 plan later this
week to simulcast the music that came down at the
event.
FILMS-AA Film Coop shows Mulligan's The Other tonight,
at 7, 9, Aud. A; Cinema Guild shows Gold Diggers of
1933 tonight at 7, 9:05, Arch. Aud.; History 104 shows
Ray's Pather Panchali tonight at 7:30, UGLI Multil ur-
pose rm.
DRAMA-First Circle ppesents a chamber play Rosemary's
Baby tonight at 7:30, 2528 Frieze.
MUSIC-DMA Piano series presented by Music School: Liszt
transcendental etudes tonight at 8, SM Recital Hall.
By RICHARD GLATZER
Fellini Roma. It seems quite
fitting that this extremely pei
sonal director should incorpor-
ate his name into the title of
his latest movie. Yet there was
a time when it would not have
been the least bit fitting. Federica
Fellini had his origins in Italian
Neo-Realism, a school of movie-
making that stressed a documen-
tary-like, natural' depiction of
ordinary life -- and therefore a
toning down of any directorial
tendency towards flamboyance.
Fellini's vision, however,. is noth-
ing if not a flamboyant one; more
personal expression for the man
meant a break from the realistic
conventions he had previously re-
spected. That break began in La
Dolve Vita (1960) and in the
Fellini episode of Boccaccio 70
(1962); it was made completely
in 8/2 (1964), a brilliant, highly
dreamlike film that is complete-
ly structured on several differ-
ent levels of reality by f r e e
association and stream-of-con-
sciousness.
Fellini's work would never be
the same again; he has since at-
tempted a female version of 81/2,
a short horror story, an aesthe-
tically stunning creation of a to-
tally alien universe, and a minor,
delightful comic explication of
what the circus means to Fellini
- all of them thoroughly idio-
syncratic, thoroughly personal
films.
Now Fellini has attempted what
STUDENT LABORATORY THEATRE
PRESENTS
THE EXORCIST
Adapted from the novel written by WILLIAM BLATTY
AND
ENCHANTED NIGHT
By SLAWOMIR MROZEK
ARENA THEATRE, Frieze Building
April 4th and 5th
Performances begin promptly at 4:10
FREE ADMISSION
This summer in GREECEcreate the arts
concerts, festivals, performances,
archeological field trips
courses given in music/dance/painting/drawing/theatre/
poetry/archeology/greek language/
greek literature/credit courses/... sun/
islands. ../distinguished faculty
sessions: June 4th to 29th, July 2nd to 27th
. .
-
that the director first learned of
Rome from an ancient inscribed
stone that lay in a small field
near his village. Yet while Fel-
lini shows us this field and stone,
several villagers, casually walk-
ing by, are talking of America:
"Everything they eat comes out
of a can." This scene is followed
by a series of frequently hilar-
ious episodes in which the di-
rector establishes the irrevocable
linkage, in his mind, of Rome
with History, the Church, Il-
lusion, and Sex. We are treated,
in rapid succession, to such
things as a professor in Fellini's
Catholic grammar school re-en-
acting Caesar's crossing the Rub-
icon, a town dissolute verbally
defiling a statute of Caesar, Fel-
lin's mother listening to the Ro-
man mass on the radio, the en-
tire Fellini clan attending a glad-
iator-history-romance spectacle
film, a nymphomaniac (t h e
town dentist's wife) whom Fel-
lini sees at that theatre making
love in an automobile while a
long line of anxious suitors waits
outside. These sequences are un-
formly fine, filmed in a wide-
eyed, exaggerated, stylized man-
ner (not unlike the manner in
which similar scenes in T h e
Clowns were shot) that in a sense.
reflects the innocent vantage
point from which these things are
seen.,
Fellini Roma shifts gears and
becomes truly brilliant when our
Fellini figure, now a young man,
travels to Rome for the f i r s t
time, to stay with a family. And
the style shifts accordingly.
There is a human vitality here, a
chaotically scrupulous recreation
of pre-World War II Rome, and
a rush of impressions filled with
a sense of felt life that perfectly
suits the vision of a parochial
/cap
young man seeing the Eternal
City through fresh eyes. Fellini
embraces the humanity of 1938
Rome in all forms - the deca-
dent, the sensual, the spiritual,
the physical. These scenes al-
most seem to be a wedding of
Fellini's personal vision with his
old Neo-Realism. Sure, that
overflowing exuberance, color,
and excitement is more the result
of the director's own imagination
than a depiction of the actual
manner in which certain people
lived at a certain time. Still,
the painstaking care with which
Fellini recreates a recent, re-
membered era, the way he uses
faces and actors here, are dif-
ferent from some of his 1960's
surrealistic efforts. At any rate,
the scenes in the Roman fam-
ily's apartment and a scene at
an outdoor cafe (like Roma's la-
ter nostalgic sequences) are not
quite like anything Fellini has
ever done before, and they are
incredibly entertaining, ultimate-
ly even poignant.
It is inevitable, I suppose, that
Fellini end his reminiscing and
take us to the present. He does so
via a rainy trafic jam, echoing
what is probably the granddaddy
of all traffic jam scenes, the open-
ing of 81/2. The sequence presents
a vision we have been prepared
for by the opening scene of the
film - one of technology and big-
ness encroaching upon and re-
stricting human vitality. One no
longer takes a train to Rome as
one did in 1938; one struggles
along the freeways, passing the
carcasses of cows killed in a
trunk collision, watching the life
contained and stifled by the auto-
mobile chassis. The traffic jam
ends at the Colosseum, thereby
providing us with one of the many,
sequences of the movie in which
t
res an era
he calls, "a portrait of Rome";
one would hardly expect a George
Pierrot travelogue. Indeed, Fel-
lini begins his film, as he did
The Clowns, with his childhood
recollections of the subject at
hand. In the very first scene,
Fellini establishes the film's pri-
mary tension - that of modern-
ity threatening the antiquity that
Fellini cherishes. We are told
Write to: The Athens Centre for the Creative Arts
Office of the Registrar
Philadelphia Musical Academy
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19107
215-735-9635
BETTE MIDLER concert review coming on tomorrow's arts page
s i
Sat., Sun., & Wed, at
1,3,5,7, 9
Mon., Tues., Thur., Fri. at
7 p.m. & 9 p.m. Only
INGMAR BERGMAN'S
aRIESAND
tov.
tonight
50 One Step Beyond
11:20 9 News
11:30 2 Movie
"The Reckoning" (1969)
4 Johnny Carson
7 Jack Paar Tonite
50 Movie
"Lady Killer." (1933)
12:00 9 Movie
"Pardon Us." (1931)
1:00 4 7 News
1:30 2 Movie
modern insanity is juxtaposed
with ancient monuments.
In his shift from 1938 to 1973,
Fellini's style changes according-
ly. It is ironic and appropriate
that the director be at his most
realistic when recreating the past
and that he become more and
more visionary and surrealistic
when depicting the elements of
technology at work in the pre-
sent day. He is only slightly sur-
realistic here in the traffic se-
quence, more' so in other "mo-
dern" sequences.
Fellini treats us to a bit more
of the Rome of today - a gag-
gle of oppressive American tour-
ists, a crowd of people arguing
with him as to what his film
should show. The director (nar-
rating his film) then suddenly
tells us he has decided to re-
create a small variety theatre at
the outbreak of the war. The
transition is not the "non se-
quitur" it may seem; it is as
though Fellini, sick of the pre-
sent, returns once again to the
past, though even in the past time
is creeping up on him. His variety
show, embued once more with a
perfect sense of time and place,
is perhaps the most brilliant sin-
gle segment of the movie. Yet
all the vibrant life of the show
and its audience is suddenly ar-
rested when an air raid siren
goes off. A sign that modernity,
in a sense, is tainting even Fel-
lini's delightful nostalgia. We
then visit an air raid shelter and
afterwards see a haunting scene
in which a woman, running be-
neath a viaduct towards her hus-
band (she is a mere frantic sha-
dow, shot in longshot), screams
out the tragic news of damage
the most recent bombing h a s
caused. Fellini's reminiscences
have been utterly soiled; he
then shifts back to the present
day.
Now people are living under-
ground, not to seek safety from
aerial attack, but to build sub-
ways. In a futgristic and bizarre
sequence, Fellini and film crew
tour the subterranean passage-
ways, see the robot-like subway
workers, and are on hand when
a supoosedly 2000-year-old bu1ried
Roman house is uncovered by a
grotesue machine. The . se-
mnence is visually stunning and
the iuxtaposition of the tech-
noloqical with the ancient makes
nerfect thematic sense; still, Fel-
lini's demanding that we susnend
our disbelief for a moment and
accet the "discovered" ancient
house and its frescoes (right out
of Fellini Satyricon) as real is a
bit more than I can take. The se-
auence strikes me as just a mite
hokey..
We are next treated to one
more juxtaposition of the mo-
dern with the ancient: the spec-
tacle of free-loving long hairs
snrawled along the Spanish Stes.
Another asoect of modernity that
sends Fellini scurrying back to
a nostalgic memory, one of his
less permissive times - and of
his own sexual outlets, the whore-
houses. Set as it is during World
War II, it is Fellini's most re-
cent bit of nostalgia, and his
last.
The director then returns to
the present for good by interview-
ing someone who shares Fellini's
love of the past and enoys re-
miniscing, a supposed Princess
who bemoans the present, imper-
sonal state of the Church and
longs for the good old davs when
she was pals with the Cardinals
and everybody knew each other.
Obviously there is a parallel here
between the Princess and Fel-
lini. Yet the Princess is totally
grotesque. Perhaps we are to see
in her the danger of indulging
overly in nostalgia. Anyway, she
throws an ecclesiastical fashion
show, an unearthly spectacle
played not for laughs as one
might expect but for cinematic
effect. The point is clear: t h e
Church, like everything else, is
degenerating into lifelessness.
Yet I wish the episode were short-
er and (is it too much to ask
of a vision of the future?) that
it was a bit more tied down to
everyday reality.
Is the bizarrerie and bleakness
of the fashion show then the only
future Fellini sees for us? Yes
and no. The final scenes of
Roma are somewhat ambivalent
about what's to come. We see the
happy, colorful, yet contempor-
ary "Festival of Ourselves', a
carnival in which there is, as Fel-
lini tells us, "Not much differ-
ence from the Roma of 2000 years
ago or the beginning of this pic-
ture or forever and ever." Yet
while people eat in sidewalk
cafes and while Gore Vidal talks
of how Romans are like cats
(cats are a recurring motif in
the film), we see innocent long
hairs sitting by a fountain be-
ing beaten by the police.
The Festival continues until
very late. The streets are fin-
ally empty. Fellini tells us,
"There is a great silence. You
can only hear the water of the
fountains." Then the droning of
a troupe of motorcyclists cruis-
ing about the city becomes loud-
er and louder, intruding upon
Fellini's quiet world. In an eerie
and gorgeous final juxtiposition
of the technological with the his-
toric, we follow the motorcyclists
as they circle about Rome's mon-
uments in the ghostly emptiness
of early morning. A totally bleak
vision of what's in store for us?
Not exactly. Just before the film
closes, Fellini fades out t h e
noise of the motorcycles before
the image disappears. In a sense,
silence, and the artworks of An-
cient Rome, like Faulkner's Dil-
sey, endure. Rome wasn't nam-
ed the Eternal City for nothing.
The director, then, sees Art as
timeless; and Fellini has created
in Roma the filmic equivalent of
those panoramic frescoes the
man cherishes. And while Roma
is panoramic, there is never-
theless - as I hope I've shown
- a -carefully structured, the-
matically cohesive, ambitious and
often brilliant whole. Yet if I
may single out for praise seg-
ments from the finely woven
fabric of the film, the recreations
of wartime Italy, wedding as they
do the old Fellini with the more
personal Fellini, are tremendous-
ly entertaining and really quite
wonderful. -
The Lone Ranger and Tonto
thundering across the west!
Hear them in action over:
WCBN--650 in the dorms
* Tuesdays and Thursdays ''BEST
10 - 10:30 p.m. Picture Director
Sponsored by UAC Screenplay0
Actress (Liv Ullman)w
-N.Y. Film Critics Awards
SERIES NOW ON SALE'
I
6:00 2 4 7 News "Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo"
9 Courtship of Eddie's Father (1937)
56 Operation Second Chance 9 Movie
6:30 2 CBS News "Sons of the Desert."
4 4NBC News (1933)
7 ABC News 3:00 2 TV High School
9 I Dream of Jeannie 3:30 2 News
50Gilligan's Island
56 How Do Your Children
Grow?
7:00 2 Truth or Consequences
4 News
7 To Tell The Truth 89.5 fm
9 Beverly Hillbillies
50 1 Love Lucy 9:00 Morning After Show
56 French Chef 12:00 Progressive Rock
7:30 2 What's My Line? 4:00 Folk
4 You Asked For It 7:00 Sports
x Price is Right 8:00 Rhythm and Blues
9 Bobby Goldsboro 11:00 Progressive Rock
50 Hogan's Heroes 3:30 signof
-6 Earthkeeping 33 inf
8:00 2 Maude
4 Movie cable tv
"Lord Love a Duck" (1966)
9 UFOperatures Rising Channel 3
50 Dragnet
56 Naturalists 3:30 pixanne
7 MovIe 4:00 Today's woman (Dr. Eva Jesse,
"M', from the original "Porgy and
"Family Flight" Bess")
56 Bill Moyers' Journal 4:30 Something Else
50 Merv Griffin 5:OOStratosphere Playhouse
9:00 9 News (The Crimson Ghost)
56 Common Ground 5:30 local news
9 A: ar of Children,6:00 Love and the Law (Norris
9 Front Page Challenge Thomas discusses citizens
56 Black Journallrights from arrest to trial)
10:00 4 First Tuesday 6:30 NCAA Super Sports
7 Marcus welby, M.D. 7:00 Community Dialogue
9 Tuesday Night (Police Chief Walter Krasny
50 Perry Mason and Councilman Jerry De
56 Detroit Black Journal Grieck discuss the involvement
10:30 56 360 Degrees of police in school discipline.
11:00 2 4 7 News Also, David Blanchard ex-
9 CBC News plains Project Row)
The Deadline for
Submitting New Work,
0 TO TH E
O UNION GALLERY JURY
WILL BE
SUNDAY, APRIL 15 by 5 P.M. Q
GALLERY HOURS: Wed.-Sun., 12-5 p.m.
Friday Eve., 7-10 p.m.
L i ) ' t C O ? G k. f C ) _ O O '_ Q = O "t C
By LORRE WEIDLICH
If you like Celtic music, Fri-
day night -at the Ark would have
felt like heaven. The Boys of
the Lough are four fantastic mus-
icians from Ireland, Tyneside,
and the Shetland Islands who
play and singsome of the nicest
traditional music I've heard.
Aly Bain is the Shetland Is-
lander, and his fiddling is almost
legendary in Ann Arbor. He
rocks back and forth as he plays,
his hair flying, and out come
some of the nicest sounds a fid-
dle can produce-"like honey,"
one member of the audience com-
mented to me. The variety of
sounds he can produce is extra-
ordinary - during one song about
a pig, he came up with a series
of amazingly realistic squeals.
Dave Richardson added some
nice sounds on the banjo, b u t
more interesting were the things
he played on a strange instru-
ment with a banjo neck and a
body shaped like a flat lute.
He informed the audience that
he had designed it after t h e
sound of his tenor banjo drove
Daily Photo by STUAPT HOLLANDER
One of the Boys of the Lough
73oS' at Ark
Celtic traditional
the neighbors to put up 'for sale'
signs. Regardless of its origin,
its sounds was an ideal counter-
part to the other instruments.
The two Irishmen did most of
the singing, a series of songs
illustrating Irish humor at its
best. According to one of them,
a British official offers an Irish-
man 50 pounds to point out a pri-
vate still, in order to collect the
taxes imposed by the British
government and expertly avoided
by the Irish moonshiners. T h e
Irishman takes the money and
points out his brother, saying
"They wouldn't make him a sar-
geant, so he's a private still."
Robin Morton plays a bod-
hran (pronounced bowron), a
small portable vertical drum,
and Cathal McConnell, besides
playing flute beautifully, has one
of the finest Irish , voices I've
heard yet - the sliding, orna-
mentation, and nasal quality typi-
cal of Irish singing, lyrical but
controlled.
One of the peaks of Robin's per-
formance was his song about the
baby who wouldn't shut up the
whole time it was left to its
father's care, who was pushed to
some funny, extremes trying to
quiet it. Not only was the song
amusing, but his technique-half
singing, half speaking - effective-
ly heightened the .story.
The evening was a nice bal-
ance of vocal and instrumental
music punctuated by amusing
stories, anecdotes, and song in-
troductions. Instruments w e r e
brought together' in many differ-
ent combinations, always w i t h
beautiful results. It was a real
treat not only for Celtic music
freaks, but for lovers of mellow
traditional music of any kind.
The University of Michigan
School of Music Presents
Debussy's Exquisite Masterpiece
PELLEAS AND MELISANDE
opera, in English
Josef Blatt, conductor
Ralph Herbert, stage director
R. C. PLAYERS present
THE THREE SISTERS
by ANTON CHEKHOV
Directed by DOUG SPRIGG
APRIL 4 -_7 at 8:00
MATINEE: SATURDAY, APRIL 7 at 2:00
EAST QUAD AUDITORIUM
ADMISSION $1.25
Tickets on sale Tuesday, April 3 from 3:00-5:00 p.m. and
one hour before each performance.
'WOMEN'S W
COMMUNITY
iYMPOSIUM
Welcome to the Women's Community Symposium! This is
the first co-operative effort of all interested women's groups
from the communities and campus area, and the birth of
an annual event. The motivation for this event is to reach
outside of the academic community and encourage interest,
participation and open dialogue among women of all
economic and racial backgrounds.
featured in
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