Tuesdgy,.:. October 1.:7, 1972 THE WCH'iGAN DAILY Page Three- Tuesday, October 17, 1972 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Pone Three Everyone W Fun, Food, NEW PEOPLE WA Velcome 1 GRAD COFFEE HOUR Wednesday, Oct. 18 8-10 p.m. West Conference Room, 4th Floor RACKHAM OUTSIDE ON THE TERRACE People VELCOME! I SPECIAL EVENINGS- SHE Sunday and Monday: Quarter NihIs (BEER AND WINE) j Tuesday: All drinks 1/2 Price HE~ Wednesday: Singles Night free admission and ail drinks /2 price for women 341 So. Main, Ann Arbor 769-5960 VOTE SALLADE {.PROSECUTOR A month ago, George Sallade charged that the in- cumbent prosecutor had no women, blacks,. Chi- conos, or members of other minority groups on his professional staff. The prosecutor admitted it was true and did nothing. SALLADE will do something about it. IT'S TIME FOR A CHANGE! VOTE SALLADE FOR PROSECUTOR NOV. 7t h DEMOCRAT Paid Political Advertisement CULTURE DALENDA UPCOMING THEATRE TIP-University Players present Sam- uel Beckett's Endgame in the Arena Theatre at 8, Oct. 19-22; 24-28. THEATRE-Bernard Shaw'sDon Juan in Hell this afternoon at 2 in Pease Aud. by EMU faculty cast; Sound of Music opens tonight at Detroit's Fisher theatre. MUSIC-Guitarist Ernesto Bitetti presented by University Musical Society tonight at 8:30, Rackham Aud.; Michael Radulescu of the Vienna Academy in organ recital to- night at 8:30, Hill; FILMS-Ann Arbor Film Coop shows Midnight Cowboy to- night in Aud. A, .7, 9:30. About this film Daily reviewer Matthew Gerson writes: Texas-born dishwasher-turned-stud Joe Buck hits the "big city" of New York to make his fortune. He en- counters a series of bizarre failures, runs out of money, and finally befriends a waddling, diseased runt named Ratzo. Poignancy of these two losers' relationship-and their trust and desperate closeness-form the story of this 1969 John Schlesinger film, starring Jon Voigt and Dustin Hoffman. Also showing tonight by Cinema Guild, Nights of Cabiria in Arch Aud., 7, 9:05; Women's -Studies Film Ser- ies shows tonight Women on the Other Side of the Easel, UGLI Multi-purpose room, 7. Lght oot in Detrot By RICHARD GLATZER I had thought I knew what to expect from a press conference with Jean-Luc Godard and Jean- Pierre Gorin. Not that I was particularly familiar with their films. Godard's pre-'68 movies (at least those I had seen) struck me mostly as cinematic doodling, new forms without sub- stance - the work of a man who had nothing to say, but was con- stantly in search of new ways to say it. When Godard joined forces with Gorin in '68 and turned from aesthetics to politics, I was less interested than ever. Half of a N.Y. Film Festival audi- ence walking out on the direc- tors' Wind From the East was more than enough to keep me away. And as for their other films, I neither knew how many they were nor what they were called - nor did I care. That is, until I learned that the two directors were coming here and that I would have the op- portunity to interview them. My reading only made me dis- like the directors more than ever before. In a 1970 N. Y. Times interview, Godard and Gorin seemed strident, outspoken, in- tentionally offensive. No cine- matic shop talk here! Pure pol- itics. Aesthetics was strictly a concern of the past. Yet the two men who appeared. at the press conference Satur- day were not at all what I had expected. (Which says something both about the changes that have come about in Godard and Gorin and about the biases of the media) Godard politely ans- wered questions while eating danish and drinking coffee - not all the flaming politico I had pictured. And Gorin was down- right friendly, open, doing his best not to offend anyone. Naturally in preparing my questions earlier, I had care- fully avoided any film ques- tions that were not closely tied to politics. Yet here was God- ard admitting, "I'm very per- verted. I like commercial T.V. I like any movie. I just like the flow of the images." Here was Godard explaining that, for the first time, he felt close to the American masses when he paid his three dollars to see The Godfather. Here were Godard and Gorin willing to explain why they think Clockwork Orange is, "a paranoid movie . .i. a com- plete fascist movie." As for politics, the two men were, as they themselves put it, no longer willing to "sneak about politics," but preferring rather, "to speak more oliticallv about things." Doctrinaire ideologies were strictly avoided (quite a change from Godard of La Chi- noise): "If Mao is what I'm do- ing, OK, I'm a Maoist." And the directors' specific views on certain issues were careflly avoided, if they were thought to be offensive. Take, for example, what happened when I asked, what, in view of the fact that the directors had made a film for Al Fatah in Jor- dan, Godard and Gorin thought of the r'~cent events at the Olym- pics. Godard, king of double- talk and of question evading, simply explained that their Arab film was not financed by Al Fa- tah, but rather by several Arab friends, that, after having re- turned from Jordan with the footage, the directors decided it would make for a miserable movie, and that the rushes for the film are still sitting unedited somewhere in France. All very interesting, but all an avoidance of my question. When pressed further about the events at Munich, Godard struck off on another tangent. This time it was a list of oppressed people for whom Godard had sympathy ("I have sympathy for the wo- men because they are oppressed by men - especially by me.") Finally, though, Gorin decided to answer the question straight- forwardly. He explained that the two directors view of the event is unique, that many people would refuse to talk further with them if they knew what this view was.Gorinesaid simply that they do not believe in mar- tyrs, that they, "don't believe in dying revolutionaries." Contrast this with the out- spoken Godard and Gorin of the past: "When the astronauts were out there in space, I wished that they would not return. I would have been glad if they had died," Godard told a N. Y. Times reporter two years ago. Why are these once overly vo- ciferous directors trying to be- come somewhat inoffensive and agreeable?. Perhaps partially because Godard has had two very close brushes with death in the past two years - he seems to have mellowed. But, more importantly, in addition to this (or possibly because of this), Godard and Gorin seem more genuinely interested in commun- icating with people, in avoiding the alienation of the movie-go- ing public, than they were -two years ago. And this desire to reach more people is the directors' justifica- tion for making Tout Va Bien, an almost commercial, 35 milli- meter film, replete with two big box-office stars, Yves Montand and Jane Fonda. Godard and Gorin want their movie to be more widely seen. Hence the use of two "loud- speakers," the two stars. Hence the wide (or wider than usual) commercial distribution of the movie. Hence the directors' cur- rent tour of ten American cam- puses and their recent visit to the New York' Film Festival. Reflecting on Godard, holding fairly securely until he turned completely revolutionary after Weekend; in 1968., Godard and Gorin seem to me to be quite sincere in their desire to awake the movie-going public to the problems of our contemporary , existence a n d what can be done about it., Yet sincerity and the desire to communicate do not necessarily guarantee a successful film. Godard and Gorin realize that their recent films have not reached a large audience (God- ard calls Vladimir and Rosa, "a completely miserable movie"), Gorin tion of the movie gets underway. T h e s e Brechtian techniques, designed to keep the audience aware of 'the fact that they're watching a film, continue once the action begins. Godard'and Gorin insist on showing us that the factory in which part of the film takes place is- nothing more than a movie set. Actors enter their roles a split second after the camera is turned on. Char acters talk straight to the cam- era. And, once Tout has run its hour and a half length, an off- screen voice says, "Every film has to end." By DIANE LEVICK Relaxing with a beer after his concert Saturday night, Gordon Lightfoot responded to questions from the press and excited fans. "What do you think about when you're singing in concert?" ask- ed one rehearsed fan. "Mostly about getting through the song!" Accompanying himself on six WASHBOAR and his SUPER SUDS OF RHYTHM NO COVER 217SASH 2M-2Atv and 12-string guitars, Lightfoot forgot some of the lyrics of four songs in what was an otherwise spirited concert. At one point, during his "Looking at the Rain," he miraculously ad libbed some words when his memory failed. Half the audience seemed to en- joy it; the other half didn't even seem to notice the new lines. Despite these occasional mem- ory lapses, the long-time folk- singer shared with his audience a rapport more cordial than the one he mustered in Ann Arbor last February. At that time, Lightfoot's divorce was reflecting a bitterness on stage, and the humor he attempted didn't come off very well. But Saturday night the old enthusiasm came back- even in a song like "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" which he has played at every concert for years. After he bemoaned the theft of his old guitars in Saginaw and urged that they be returned, he sensed a strange anticipation among the teenyboppers in the audience. "You want me to give out my address right here?" he asked with mock incredplity. "Yeah!" squeeled a few fans to their lace-shirted idol. But he launched into some re- cent songs instead. Accompanied by Terry Clements on a fine acoustic lead guitar and Richard Haynes on bass, Lightfoot per- formed a number of songs from his "Don Quixote" and "Sum- mer Side of Life" albums, plus a few older tunes and five brand new ones. Lightfoot previewed his album "Old Dan's Records," scheduled See MORE, Page 7 Daily Photo by KAREN KASMAUSKI Jean Luic Godard (right) and Jean Pierre Gorin and they are now trying to find, "new forms to bring out new contents," Hence their renewed interest in aesthetics, in film, and in engrossing, rather than boring, the mass audience. God- ard himself said during the press conference that many people who despised Weekend will like Tout Va Bien. And I think he is right. I for one found Tout inoffensive, pro- i i I { ARTS 1 Skeptic that I am, I can't help wondering how much money has to do with the making of Tout and its distribution, rather than allegiance to revolutionary causes. Financial interest must play some role. Yet Godard and Gorin are not making very much -more than their plane fare on this tour, and the film has only been seen by 150,000 people in France. If Godard himself was interested. in making money, he would never have left his post as lead- er of the high-brow cinematic avant - garde, a post he was vocative, surprisingly ambigu- ous for a political film. Yet I don't think it is Godard-Gorin's new techniques that are prin- cipally responsible for the suc- cess of their new movie. Sure, there are all sorts of Brechtian touches. The film opens with two off - screen voices discussing the making of the movie; "I want to make a film . . . that makes money." Cut to a shot of a hand rapidly signing the various checks cov- ering the costs of Tout. "If we hire stars, we'll get money." And so on until the actual ac- These devices are. nothing new - they seem to be the. mainstay of most every avant- garde film around, from Pamela and Ian to Parades to Maidstone -and I don't believe they are ever truly successful, yet God- ard andr Gorin's use of themis as clever and entertaining as any I have seen. But what I found To be Tout Va Bien's major asset is its lack of pat doctrinaire political mean- ings, its realistic assessment of the problems confronting every- one from harassed workers to middle - class intellectuals try- ing to reconcile their life-styles with their leftist leanings. He (Yve Montand) is a film director who ran the crest of the New Wave, only to be shak- en by the events in Paris of May, 1968. (The parallel to God- ard is obvious). He now makes his living by creating insipid commercials rather than pro- duce escapist films he now sees as being "obscene". She (Jane Fonda), his wife, is an Amer- can journalist working for th1e American Broadcasting Serv- ice. She too is concerned with leftist causes, yet is uncertain as to just what she should do about the state of things.mb He and She's problems come to a head when they arrive on the scene of a workers' revolt in a sausage factory. By listening to the workers' personal reasons for hating their jobs - the smell of the meat clinging to their bodies, the ennui of their daily routines - the contradictions' in His and Her lives become unig- norable. Godard and Gorin offer no See DIRECTORS, Page 7 Organization Notces U of M Ski Club, mass meeting, Oct. 17, 7:30 PM, Union Bailroom. Sched- uled trips: Christmas - Steamboat Spring, Colorado and Sprink Break - Aspen Colorado. ENACT, recruitment meeting,. Oct. 18, 7:30 PM, Natural Resources. - 1 " h Sunday Feast The Ah Ahk troupe provides a feast for both eye and car as they bring to Ann Arbor a program representing the full history of Korean performing arts. In this, the first program of an expanded East Asian Series, Korean classical and folk music and dance- all with authentic costumes-will be presented on tha stage of Rackham Auditorium, Sunday afternoon, October 22 at 2:30. Tickets at $5, $4, and $2.50. (A few series tickets remain for four events of the East Asian Series $8.50.) Future programs: Chinese Skin Shadow Puppets, Saeko Ichinohe & Company from Japan, and Topeng Dance Theater of Bali. New Phoenix Troupe Flexes Wings By GEORGE , NT The cast of 17 sat on metal camp chairs as Ste- phen Porter, director with the New Phoenix Repertory Company, advised them on what to expect during the next five weeks of rehearsal of Moliere's "Don Juan." Standing unobtrusively behind one of the chairs, in a tangle of designers and photographers, was Harold Prince, one of Broadway's foremost producer-directors of musicals, who is sched- uled to direct Eugene O'Neill's "The Great God Brown" at the Phoenix this season. The New Phoenix Company, which opens at the Lyceum Theater here Dec. 10 and presents the Moliere and O'Neill plays on alternate nights, initiates this ,season its program aimed at bring- ing repertory theater closer to a larger public. COM/NG/ MORE THAN TREES I ..: al..3t.. ,::