Friday, January 19, 1973
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Page Three
Friday, January 19, 1973 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Three
A Tale of Two Cities
Cinema Guild
Fri.
Tale of Two Cities (1935) was
David Selznick's last production
under his contract with MGM and
it seems to follow his, and that
studio's, penchant for doing
movies in the grand manner-a
style the New York Times de-
scribes as "a most lavish and
careful mood," i.e. an elaborate
historical costume drama. If you
are prone to these Hollywood
spectacles (and I am), then Tale
of Two Cities may be just the
sort of escape you are looking
for.
The screen adaptation sticks
very closely to Dickens' original
novel with the exception that in
the book the two men resemble
each other enough to be the same
person and in the movie the two
actors do not really look very
much alike because MGM wanted
to avoid having one man play
both roles. The reason? So as not
to confuse the viewers' sym-
pathies-which, of course, should
all be for poor Sydney Carton as
he steps up to the guillotine to
do his far, far better thing.
-WILLIAM MITCHELL
Don't Knock the Rock
Cinema Guild
Sat.
Don't Knock the Rock is a par-
ticularly unfortunate combination
of moronic script, dismal music,
and the most repulsive collection
of human beings ever gathered
together, to my knowledge, on
one wide screen. The cast is in-
competent to the man. The only
tv.
tonight
6:00 2 4 7 News
9 Courtship of Eddie's Father
50 Flintstones
56 Bridge with Jean Cox
6:30 2 CBS News
4 NBC News
7 ABC News
9 I Dream of Jeannie
50 Gilligan's Island
56 Book Beat
7:00 2 Truth or Consequences
4 News
7 To Tell the Truth
9 Beverly Hillbillies
50 I Love Lucy
56 World Press
7:30 2 What's My Line?
4 Hollywood squares
possible relief from almost 90
minutes of greasy smiles, wild
dancing and pathetic dialog is a
character out of Balzac's Droll
Stories: Little Richard.
Little Richard is a Rock & Roll
type musician and he is crazy.
But at least he is bearable.
The plot of this dreary ordeal
revolves around the efforts of
heavily made-up casting office
leftovers impersonating teenagers
to convince a group of authorities
that Rock & Roll is fit for human
consumption.
The case is not proved.
-DAVID KESSEL
Michigan Daily
February 21, 1957
The Thirty-Nine Steps
Cinema Guild
Sunday
In The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935)
Alfred Hitchcock revealed the
brilliant 'cinematic craftsman-
ship that has made him one of
the leading film innovaters for
over 40 years. All of the action in
this film focuses around an at-
tempt to discover the meaning of
the "39 Steps." Hitchcock uses
this puzzle, which he terms a
"McGuffin," as the focal point
for a series of chases across
England and Scotland.
Hitchcock uses his control of
sound, editing and storytelling
technique to rush us on to the
film's climax. He throws the
hero, Robert Donat, into a wild
variety of settings in his journey:
scenes on moving trains, a chase
for the hero in the fog, a Scottish
farm, a vaudeville theater and
a political gathering. Hitchcock
7 Wait Till Your Father
Gets Home
9 Lassie
50 Hogan's Heroes
8:00 2 Mission: Impossible
4 Sanford and Son
7 Brady Bunch
9 Woods and Wheels
56 Washington Week in Review
50 Dragnet
8:30 4 Little People
7 Partridge Family
9 Amazing World of Kreskin
50 Merv Griffin
56 Off The Record
9:00 2 Movie
"Can-Can" (60)
4 Circle of Fear
7 Room 222
9 News
56 FinesArt of Goofing Off
9:30 7 Odd Couple
9 Sports Scene
56 Poetry in Black
10:00 4 Bobby Darin
7 Love, American Style
9 Tommy Hunter
50 Perry Mason
56 ,High School Basketball
11:00 4 7 News
9 CBC News
50 One Step Beyond
11:15:2 News
11:20 9 News
11:30 4 Johnny Carson
7 In Concert-Variety
50 Movie
"San Antonio" (45)
11:45 2 Movie
"Rock-a-Bye Baby" (58)
12:00 9 Movie
"Face of Fear" (English, 190)
1:00 4 News
7 Movie
"Shadow in the Sky" (51)
1:45 2 Movie
"Man Bait" (English 1951)
3:0 News
3:15 2 News
moves from one to the next in
rapid-fire succession, demonstrat-
ing his genius at welding tech-
nique with content. One of the
most delightful scenes is one in
which a landlady walks into a
room, discovers a corpse, and is
about to scream. What we hear,
however, is the sound of a train
whistle-and Hitchcock then cuts
to a shot of the train (upon
which, incidently, our protagon-
ist is riding).
Anyone who has seen and en-
joyed any of Hitchcock's more
recent masterworks owes it to
himself to see this early classic
of visual story-telling.
-JEFF SORENSON
It Happened One Night
Cinema II
Fri.
Frank Capra's It Happened
One Night (1934) is classic De-
pression mythology. What Capra
did was to take several American
symbols of the thirties-hitch-
hiking, night bus rides, the then
new American phenomenon of the
motel-and redefine them in this
truly classic granddaddy of all
screwball comedy. And the film
hasn't aged a bit; the expertise of
Claudette Colbert and Clark
Gable, Robert Riskin's sharp
screenplay, Frank Capra's ace
direction, all contribute to mak-
ing this tale of a spoiled heiress
fleeing her domineering father
a funny, sharp, sexy, thoroughly
entertaining film.
Curiously enough, neither the
film's creators nor its critics had
any conception back in 1934 of
what an explosive commodity
they had on their hands. Frank
Capra had gotten the idea for the
film from an innocuous short
story, "Night Bus," that he'd
read in a 1933 issue of Cosmopoli-
tan while sitting in a Palm
Springs barber shop. So, after
having tried unsuccessfully to
cop an Academy Award by mak-
ing more serious films (American
Madness, Bitter Tea of General
Yen, Lady for a Day), Capra de-
cided to make a simple little
comedy, a bus movie. No one
was particularly enthusiastic
about the enterprise. Actors
wanted nothing to do with it;
Claudette Colbert had to be brib-
ed to play in the film (she re-
ceived twice her normal salary),
and Clark Gable was assigned to
the movie by Louis Mayer as a
sort of punishment for his ego-
tism.
And the finished film left
people equally unimpressed. Col-
bert is supposed to have told a
friend that she'd just been in
"the worst picturein the world."
The movie played for just one
week in its world premiere en-
gagement at Radio City Music
Hall. And the critics gave it a
reception that ranged from luke-
warm acknowledgment to down-
right pans (The New Yorker
called the movie, "dreary . .
pretty much nonsense").
Yet within a year, IHON had
won the five most important
Academy Awards-Best Director,
Actor, Actress, Film, and Screen-
play-a feat still unparalleled in
Academy history. Critics were
giving the film careful, much
more flattering reconsiderations.
The movie was booked into a
theater "retrospective" usually
reserved for Chaplin. Capra, Col-
bert, and Gable had become
celebrities overnight. And the
public was returning to the film
for third and fourth viewings. All
of which proves, I guess, that
consciously trying to be artsy-
craftsy doesn't always work, and
that you can never tell what
you'll find in a Palm Springs
barbershop.
It Happened One Night is, by
the way, a good preview of
what's forthcoming in Cinema
Guild's February Capra Festival,
a ten movie retrospective of the
director's films that will be
capped by Mr. Capra's personal
appearance and a public screen-
ing of his personal print of Lady
for a Day.
-RICHARD GLATZER
Tristana
Cinema II
Sat. & Sun.
I suppose the reason I find
unglamorous performance by
Deneuve, but the movie seems to
me to be lacking in a pretty
important quality-a basic sense
of humanity.
RICHARD GLATZER
The Devils
New Morning
Fri. & Sat.
The true story of how, in 1634,
Sister Jeanne of the Angels'
sexual hysteria brought about the
execution of liberal thinking
Father Grandier is potent enough
stuff as it exists in the history
books (most notably a work on
the incident by Alduous Huxley).
But Ken Russell, rather than
analyze or realistically depict
this 17th Century insanity, de-
cided to cinematically compound
it. His clanging, flamboyant, sur-
realistic film is filled with dis-
cordant music, contemporary-
Gothic sets, and allusions to the
Modern Day, just in case you
aren't led naturally to draw 20th
century parallels. It's all quite
macabre, very explicit, and
thoroughly empty.
-RICHARD GLATZER
cinema
weekend
ber of interviews with people
who, 25 years earlier, were
French and British parliamen-
tarians, French resistance work-
ers, German soldiers and French
citizens. They recount their ex-
periences, their fears, humilia-
tions and efforts to survive, and
with the aid of the time distance
try to understand why these were
needless or necessary. Edited in
with the interviews are docu-
mentary scenes of the war and
takes from German propaganda
films, which serve to emphasize
or counter what is being said.
The film is one to be watched
and listened to attentively. It is
remarkably rich in anecdotes, in-
formation and emotion, though
overall it seems to be under-
stated. For one who is not fa-
miliar with the events of this
time it may be a bit difficult to
follow. Nevertheless it should be
seen, as it is an important event
in itself; such a large-scale docu-
mentary is rarely undertaken, let
alone given such wide commer-
cial distribution even when as
superbly realized as this one.
And also it is a film which
treats its audience as an intel-
ligent, concerned, compassionate
group of people-certainly differ-
ent from many recent fiction
films.
-DAVID GRUBER
Savage Messiah
Fifth Forum
Savage Messiah is Ken Rus-
sell's most recent contribution to
that ever-growing school of cin-
ema (ever-growing because Mr.
Russell is ever-making new
movies), the cinema of hysteria.
The film is the story of Henri
Gaudier Brzeska (Scott Anthony),
a Parisian artist who worked
during the years preceding
World War I. Or, as Russell puts
it (more or less), it is, "T h e
story of a young French art stu-
dent and the lonely Polish woman
(Sophie Brzeska) he met just be-
fore the first World War." The
two first encounter each other at
a Paris library. And in the tra-
dition of screwball comedy gone
psychotic, Sophie (Dorothy Tutin)
shows herself to be Henri's kind
of person by forcing a library
patron to vacate a seat she just
so happens to have taken a
liking for. Soon after, Henri
proves that he too is one of the
club by climbing all over an
outdoor statue and spouting pithy
platitudes about the state of Life,
Love, and Things in General
("Art is Sex and Art is Revolu-
tion.").
Obviously, these two are a per-
fectly matched pair. They dub
each other "brother" and "sis-
ter." She calls him, "Boy." He
calls her, "Mamalooshka." And
the happy couple (or rather, not
so happy couple-he wants sex;
she's about twice his age and
frigid) cahort about Paris, being
loud, bizarre, Bohemian, and
shocking-in short, just being
themselves and just being
Artists.
All of which one might like to
construe as a comment on the
Decadent and Symbolist move-
ments of the late 19th and early
20th centuries. But alas, Henri
is no ordinary kook; he is, as a
friend tells him, "a treacherous
savage," a, "Messiah,"-in short,
a Savage Messiah. And, as every-
thing else Ken Russell manages
to get his hands on, SM becomes
not a depiction of confusion and
chaos, but confused and chaotic
itself. Actually I shouldn't be that
harsh on the film; Dorothy Tutin
turns in a really decent per-
See MORE, Page 8
CULOUR ALINIAR.
MUSIC-The University Chamber Choir performs Stravin-
sky's Les Noces at Hill tonight at 8.
DANCE-An international folk dance at Barbour Gym to-
night from 8-11 (teaching 8-9).
DRAMA-The Ann Arbor Civic Theatre's production of The
Lion in Winter tonight at 8 at Lydia Mendelssohn.
WEEKEND BARS AND MUSIC-Ark, U. Utah Smith (Fri.,
Sat.) admission; Bimbo's on the Hill, Cricket Smith (Fri.,
Sat.) cover; Odyssey, Locomobile (formerly Bad Luck and
Trouble-Fri., Sat.) cover; Mr. Flood's party, Brooklyn
Blues Band (Fri., Sat.) cover; Mackinac Jack's, New
Heavenly Blue (Fri., Sat., Sun.) cover;- Golden Falcon,
All Rights Reserved (Fri., Sat.) cover; Blind Pig, Brooklyn
Bluesbusters (Fri., Sat.) cover, Classical Music (Sun.) no
cover; Pretzel Bell, RFD Boys (Fri., Sat.) cover; Rubaiyat,
Iris Bell Adventure (Fri., Sat., Sun.) no cover; Del Rio,
Armando's Jazz Group (Sun.) no cover; Bimbo's, Gas-
lighters (Fri., Sat., Sun.) cover.
Barto'k Quartet:
Magnificent
Bunuel's exercises in perversity
so dull is primarily the director's
great interest in exploiting the
oddities of his characters rather
than in enabling us to under-
stand them. I have a mental
image of Bunuel, an old man
who, like the boy in The World
of Apu, enjoys dangling a dead
bird in front of an old woman
(for Bunuel, the Bourgeois Catho-
lic), delighting as she runs away
horrified.
Tristana, for instance, is in-
volved with typical Bunuel con-
cerns-an old man attracted to
his young, beautiful ward, an
innocent woman gradually ac-
quiring a cynical awareness of
her own sexuality, and a fair
selection of handicapped charac-
ters and other assorted grotes-
ques. And typically, Bunuel fails
to communicate his characters'
states of mind through anything
other than crude, ofttimes silly
symbolism. Tristana (Catherine
Deneuve) is sexually repressed.
How do we know? She dreams
she sees her guardian's decapi-
tated head as the clapper inside
a church bell. She sexually
mounts an icon inside a church.
She dips a slender, phallic sliver
of bread inside a soft-boiled egg
and bites off the tip.
And, as we follow Tristana
through hergvarious adventures
with her guardian (Fernando
Rey) and a young artist (Franco
Nero), her motives become, if
anything, more cloudy. By the
time she undrapes her mutilated
body for a deaf mute to peruse,
the film has become little more
than a freak show. Tristana is
very well put together, and it
features an uncharacteristically
if...
Mediatrics
Fri. & Sat.
During most of Lindsay Ander-
son's If . . ., one has the feeling
that he is watching what appears
to be a clinical expose of the
repressive and sadistic attitudes
inflicted on English boys in a
fancy prep school.
In the grand satiric tradition
of Jean Vigo's Zero for Conduct,
the adults in If . . . are por-
trayed as grotesque and/or mind-
less penguins, while a few of the
students (most notably Malcolm
MacDowell) are inflated to heroic
proportions. All of this merely
sets the scene, of course, for the
revolutionary catharsis built up
in reaction to the unrelenting
coldness of the academic atmo-
sphere, a coldness made all the
more evocative by the inter-
spersal of black-and-white scenes
with the color shots.
With each homoerotic flogging
administered by headmaster
Roundtree, the students' revolu-
tionary spirit gains momentum.
When at last the shots finally
ring out, the machine-gun's re-
torts fall upon the ear like a
divine and inevitable cadence. A
good film to catch if you can't
can't make it to Washington.
-BRUCE SHLAIN
The Sorrow and
the Pity
Campus
The Sorrow and the Pity is an
epic history of the German oc-
cupation of France during World
War II, related by those who suf-
fered under it and those who
brought it about. In 1969, director
Marcel Ophuls compiled a num-
By DONALD SOSIN
Bartok Quartet; Peter Komlos,
Sandor Devich, violins; Geza
Nemeth, viola; Karoly Bot-
vay, cello. Wednesday, January
17, 8:30 p.m. Rackham Audi-
torium. Chamber Arts Series of
University Musical Society.
Haydn Quartet in D major,
Op. 76, No. S Bartok-Quartet
No. 2, Op. 17 (1917) Schumann-
Quartet in A major, Op. 41, No.
3.
For Bartok lovers, Rackham
Auditorium was the place to be
Wednesday night, as the Bartok
Quartet gave a magnificent per-
formance of the Quartet No. 2.
The foursome was awarded i t s
name as an honor, and I can
think of no group more deserv-
ing. It was evident that these
musicians are completely at
home with this music, in a way
that other quartets who have
won reknown for their Bartok
(the Juilliard comes to mind)
cannot approach. It would be too
simple to say that the music
is in their blood, yet how else
to explain their extraordinary
control over tempo changes, tone
color, and expressivity?
These areas were most clear-
ly noticeable in the demonic se-
cond movement, marked "Alle-
gro molto capriccioso." But it
was capriciousness with an in-
tensity that I had not imagined
possible. The driving ostinato that
makes up much of the movement
was incredibly fast, the gypsy
tune set against it played with a
fervor that approached hysteria.
To achieve such a frenzied at-
mosphere is one thing, to get in
and out of it convincingly, as is
required in the score, is another.
The Bartok Quartet managed it
with finesse, winding down the
tempo by slow degrees, to a tran-
quil, offbeat section before re-
turning to the opening tempo.
There was no hint of following
notes; they were breathing this
music into existence with every
flick of their bows.
The final slow movement, and
to a lesser extent the opening
slow movement, were studies in
tone color, and in expressivity.
The changes in mood, frequent
interruptions of the line are,
again, difficult to make convinc-
ing; indeed, I was not prepared
for much emotional depth, bas-
ed on recordings I had thought
good. But the Bartok Quartet
made this music profoundly mov-
ing.
The Schumann quartet which
made up the second half of the
program was new to me, and
while I was not much taken with
it, I found with his other quar-
tets that they become quite ac-
cessible upon repeated hearings,
and thus I can offer little in the
way of an opinion here.
I was intrigued by the 1 a s t
movement, though. Schumann
shares with Bartok a penchant
for latching onto a rhythmic fig-
ure and milking it dry. Too
often there seems to be little
variety in these rhythms, but in
this instance my attention was
caught by three different places
where, shifting an accent, or
otherwise altering the monoton-
ous flow of things, the music
quickly acquired a great deal
more interest.
The playing was not of the
extremely high level attained in
the Bartok, especially with re-
gard to the difficult unisons, but
there was, happily, the s a m e
careful attention to little Ifluctua-
tions of dynamics that brought
the notes to life.
The Haydn quartet that opened
the concert was played q u i t e
romantically, not a currently po-
pular (in America) way of treat-
ing Haydn's music. The f i r s t
movement suffered the most, I
thought, while the Largo was en-
hanced by the lushness of t h e
perfectly matched sound. The
Finale, an example of Haydn's
witty eccentricity, opened with an
ending, a pause, another ending,
and then a naive theme with even
simpler accompaniment - re-
peated fifths - frolicking through
a number of keys to a curiously
banal conclusion.
The choice of a Mozart Menu-
etto (from K. 421) as an encore
was added proof of the group's
taste and expertise at rubato in
just the right places, and re-
ceived a vigorous round of ap-
plause from the near-capacity
Rackham audience.
Saturday N*ight Special .
SAT., JAN. 20, '73
50c OFF
ON ANY LARGE PIZZA
(WITH COUPON BELOW)
* U
IName ____- ____
*. ,
Telephone
:Address~____ _______ ______
Domino's Ann Street Shop
FREE FAST
HOT
DELIVERY
U_
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
Dir. FRANK CAPRA. With CLARK GABLE and JEAN HARLOW
Maybe Capra's best film
FRIDAY 7-9
TRISTANA
Dir. LUIS BUNUEL. With CATHERINE DENEUVE
SATURDAY & SUNDAY 7-9
one dollar aud a, angel) hall
All tickets on sale at 6 p.m. Winter schedules at all shows
---l
ONE SHOW
ONLY TONIGHT
AT 7 P.M.
Cinema 5 presents
The Sorrow
and
The Pity
Directed by
Marcel Oph'uls
Due to overwhelming response
,1hh b6 r #u4ic )7tav't
will be conducting new
GROUP LESSONS IN GUITAR
Beginning January 29th
Rental instrument kits are available at a
nominal charge applicable toward purchase
of the instrument. Private and group les-
sons are also available in guitar, flute, re-
corder h rnin rind drums.
MIDWESTERN PREMIERE
NEW WORLD FILM CO-OP
PRESENTS
"RAGA"
-FEATURING-
RAVI SHANKAR
Premieres Monday, January 22
Modern Languages Bldg., Aud. I11
(corner of E. Washington & N. Thayer)
7:30 P.M. & 9:30 P.M.
ADMISSION $1.50
the
in
lVinter
R-nn PM