Page Eight
THE SUMMER DAILY
Friday, August 3, 197:
Page Eight THE SUMMER DAILY Friday, August 3, 1 97~
Cinema weekend
Dead End - Cinema Guild,
Architecture Aud., Fri.
M y r a Breckinridge - N e w
World, MLB, Fri.
Concert for Bangla Desh -
Cinema 11, Angell Aud. A, Fri.
& Sat.
White Hest - Cinema Guild,
Architecture And., Sat.
Stolen Kisses-Friends of News-
reel, MLB, S:+t. & Sun.
The Wild Child - Friends of
Newsreel, MLB, Sat. & Sun.
Stolen Kisses-This is Truffaut
at his least pretentios - light,
irreverent, relaxed, leisurely, and
very funny. Antoine Dloinel (Jean-
Pierre Leaud) is discharged from
the Army and tries several va-
ried ways of earning a living:
he clerks in a hotel, sells shoes
(and almost becomes involved
with the proprietor's wife), plays
private eye, and ultimately ends
up as a TV repairman, all while
sporadically wooing his pretty
hearthrob, Claude Jade. Truffaut
never asks us to take Doinel's
predicaments very seriously; the
movie is filled with wry, off-
handedly comic bits.
Put in the context of Truffaut's
earlier Doinel feature film, how-
ever, Stolen Kisses (1966) gains a
certain sense of sorrow. The
infinitely vulnerable adolescent
Doinel of The 4001 Blows (t959)
hao here grown into a poker-
fa c e d, somewhat nihilistic, at-
tractive, funny, but thoroughly
opaque and seemingly invulner-
able adult. Truffaut has said that
he can he much more campas-
sionate towards a child than he
can towards an adult, and it
shows.
White Heat - The scene is a
SATURDAY and SUNDAY]
2 by Truffaut
James Cagney
hectic and tense train robberv.
Chief g a n g s t e r Cody-Jarrett
(James Cagney) keeps an eye on
the train's conductors while his
cohorts pick up the loot. One con-
ductor, who has overheard Cody's
conversation with a member of
his gang, tells him, "Cody, you'll
never get away with it." Cag-
ney's reply: "You got a good
memory for names. Too good."
Ite then proceeds to plug several
bullets into the two conductors'
stomachs.
A hazy and itmperfect descrip-
tiona of one of White Heat's early
scenes, hut it may give some
sense of the film's outrageous
use of violence and of the per-
verse, sadistic, yet undeniably
fascinating character of its main
figure. Director Raoul Walsh has,
in a sense, made his own Clock-
work Orange here: Jarrett is un-
deniably a distasteful freak, but
he is one of the only charismatic
individuals in a depersonalized
and mechanized world. An ex-
ample: Cody, prone to seizures,
throws his most violent fit in a
huge prison mess hall. Prison of-
ficials drag him out screaming.
Soon, all we hear is the regular,
steady chatter of hundreds of
forks on plates. Walsh's m a i n
concerns, however, are narrative
rather than philosophical and
White Heat packs more unrelent-
ing tension and plot action than
any three movies I can think of.
The Wild Child -- Truffaut's
beautiful recreation of the true
story of a boy found wild in
provincial France at the turn of
the 18th Century. Wild Child is
taken almost entirely from t h e
journals of the doctor who cared
for the boy and tried to civilize
him; it communicates the doc-
tor's intellectual attraction to the
boy and his underlying emotional
attachment. As always, Truffaut
recreates an era perfectly: in-
the doctor's manner of treating
the boy can be seen both the
tradition of Rationalism and the
first traces of Romanticism. An
understated, warm, and compell-
ing film.
Also Recommended:
Dead End.
-RICHARD GLATZER
SEILA Hisi 1NisR as Maggie and toe Cat prepare to ward ott an attack by her trustrated and
alcoholic husband played by James Grenier. The play will run at the Power Center through Saturday
evening.
'Repertory gives strong
By TAMMY JACOBS
and DEBRA THAL
Michigan Repertory's produc-
tion of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
rates about 4 on a scale of 5-
good but with some disappointing
flaws in both the acting and the
technical aspects.
G i v e n the imperfections of
Tennessee Williams' o r i g i n a 1
play, the acting manages to elicit
a high level of audience involve-
ment, despite Director Donald
Boros' occasional attempts to
imitate the Elizabeth Taylor-Paul
Newman film of the play.
BOTH SHEILA Rittenberg as
Maggie and James Grenier as
Brick are guilty of this character
impersonation, but, at least in
the case of Rittenberg, other
facets of the performance over-
-shadow the flaw.
Rittenberg, by the way, is the
shining light of the production.
Her Maggie is vital and pulsat-
ing, every inch Williams' cat on
a hot tin roof. She was perfect
as a woman trapped in the sexist
South of the 50s, dependent on
her husband for satisfaction-
both physical and financial.
The magnetism of Rittenberg's
performance stands in stark con-
trast to the bleakness of Brick-
a bleakness attributable both to
Williams in the original play and,
we fear, to James Grenier's per-
formance. ,.
GRENIER IS miscast as Brick..
Too young to play the drunk, de-
feated and fast-aging scion of a
wealthy plantation owner, Gre-
nier strives for the agonized yet
d e a d e n e d personality that is
Brick's, but comes up with more
deadness than agony.
Margo Martindale and Richard
Haas, as Big Mama and Big
Daddy respectively, canot be ig-
nired. Martindale succeeded as
the Mississippi 50's version of
Edith Bunker and Haas was ade-
quate as the blustering, bellow-
ing redneck farmhand turned
redneck millionaire. Big Daddy,
however, could have done with-
out the larger-than-life gestures
and constant circling of the set-
again Director Boros' fault, we
assume.
But Judy Levitt survived his
direction in her role as the for-
ever fertile Mae. A catty and
avaricious social climber, Mae
sometimes seemed too stereotyp-
ical. Tamsin Seidler and Jacob
and Saul Kozubei, the "no-neck
monsters," were a suitable foil
to Mae's pushy motherhood, na-
tural onstage as a perpetual mo-
tion trio of bratty kids.
IT HAS been said: "If you
can't do an accent well, don't
do it at all." Several of the per-
formers disregarded this classic
advice, and it hurt.
Robert Metz, as Gooper, was
A Film By FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT
"STOLEN KISSES"
R COLOR byDeluxe
ANstDbtedby 0RRIPICTUESCORPORATIO
by far the worst offender. His
attempt at Southern enunciation
traveled between Liverpool and
Boston - anywhere and every-
where but to the South. While Big
Daddy, a University speech pro-
fessor in real life, proved he can
handle a Mississippi accent, he
did not maintain it consistently.
On the other hand, Maggie, Big
Mama and Mae all did fairly
well in this department.
THE TECHNICAL aspects of
the show were generally good.
The huge wooden liquor cabinet
seemed out of place, and a yel-
low lighting effect in the first act
should have been pinker, but on
the whole, the lighting set, props,
and costuming were excellent.
What wasn't excellent was the
make-up. On the men, in fact, it
was terrible. All three male leads
looked too young for their roles.
The make-up artist did to Goop-
er's fact what Metz did to his
character-blew it. But there the
analogy ends. While the make-up
was overdone, Metz's perform-
ance was half-baked.
The women's make-up (like
their performances) was better,
despite the attempt- to make
Rittenberg took like Elizabeth
Taylor instead of like Maggie.
All in all, the production is well
worth the $2 and $3 admission
price, and its last three perform-
ances (today through Saturday)
deserve a healthy attendance.
Curtain is 8 p.m., at Power
Center.
NEWARK, Del. (UPI) - A
new high quality cultivar canta-
loupe called Cum Laude has been
developed by University of Dela-
ware agriculture experts. The
new hybrid will become a favor-
ite for roadside stands and mar-
kets because of its excellent col-
or, flavor and aroma, predicted
originator Eugene P. Brasher, a
university plant scientist.
RELIABLE
ABORTION SERVICE
Clinic in Mich.-l to 24 week
pregnancies termirfated, by li-
censed obstetrician gynecologist.
Quick services will be arranged.
Law roles.
CALL COLLECT
24 HOUR SERVICE
What on earth is a long-haired Latin
street kid doing with a tightly shorn
British Buddhist? .. . UAC-Doysta r presents
Carlos AND Makavisknu
Santana John McLaughlin
IN CONCERT
Friday, August 31st- 8 p.m.- Crister Arena
$5.00 ALL TICKETS ON SALE NOW:
Michigan Union 11-5:30 daily-763-4553 for info
during box office hours only.
Also available-at World Hdqtrs. Records and in Ypsi at Ned's b kstor
aSorry, no personal checks
Don't wait too late if you wont to see this one
MOD. LANG. AUD. 3 & 4
7 30 & 9:30 p.m. .
J ,p .25 single; $2 double
fri iq.pf newsreel_,*t- ;