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 this mnh's Playboy. See it whiler Z you ca n. . z N I I I ~ .. .......