Friday, August-9, 1974

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

Page Five


crnerna wekn

Pick of the week:
African Queen
Cinema Guild, Arch. And.
Sat., 7:30, 9:30
This John Huston film- a
tale of adventure and romance
set in the background of Africa
during World War I - is a mo-
tion picture classic of the first
order. Huston's direction is eco-
nomical, but at the same time
revealing,
But better than the story or
the direction is the marvelous
acting. Queen garnered for
Humphrey Bogart his only Os-
car. We see here not the hard
guy Bogey, but a Bogart play-
ing a simple man who is willing
to give his life for what he be-
lieves.
Katherine Hepburn also stars
as a missionary's daughter who
finds strength in herself, love
for Bogart, and the realization
of her own power as a person.
This film is surprising in that
it is great entertainment and at
the same time a great state-
ment on the nature of humanity.
The two people who journey
down the Congo River to their
doom know their fate, but be-
cause of their determination
and devotion to each other they
overcome their fear and carry
on-
African Queen is one of the
best films ever made, and is
well worth the time and money
to see it.
-David Warren
One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich
Cinema H, Aud. A
Sat., 7:30, 9:30
Of the two films so far made
from the novels of Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, one was poor and
one was excellent. The film ad-
aptation of First Circle was
pretentious and overdone. One
Day, on the other hand, is a
brutally realistic film that ac-
curately captures the impact.
of the novel.
As in the book, the film simply
records one day in the life of
one prisoner in a Stalinist labor
camp in Siberia, Ivan Deniso-
vich (played by Tom Courtnay).
The picture chillingly depicts
the brutality of the guards, the
hunger of the prisoners, and
the bitter, bitter cold.
The viewer should keep in
mind throughout this excellent

but depressing film that Solz-
henitzyn spent eight years in
such camps.
-James Hynes
The Ritual
Cinema Guild, Arch. And.
Fri., 7:30, 9:30
The Ritual looks quite differ-
ent from any other Ingmar
Bergman film you may have
seen -- simply because it's not
a movie. It's a 75-minute play
in nine scenes, a fact that's
impossibleto f o r g e t. while
watching it projected on a large
screen.
Sitting through the film, made
originally in 1969 for Swedish
television, requires all the con-
centration a viewer can mus-
ter. The movie is photographed
in a series of almost claustro-
phobic close-ups that can make
you seasick in a theater.
Making heads or tails of the
film demands more than con-
centration, it requires sympathy
and some knowledge of Berg-
man's past work.
The play concerns three tra-
veling actors, Gunnar Bjorn-
strand, Ingrid Thulin and An-
ders Ek, who have been brought
before a judge on charges of
having given an obscene per-
formance, the nature of which
is never revealed.
The movie, which is itself as
stylized as a ritual, is per-
formed by actors whose careers
are identified with the direc-
tor's and lightly recalls the ma-
jor themes of a number of
Bergman's films. As such, The
Ritual is definitely for believ-
ers only - in Ingmar Bergman.
-Jeff Sorensen
Lords of Flat bush
State
There are movies about the
fun '50s (American Graffiti),
and there are movies about the
seamy '50s (The Wild One, Re-
bel Without A Cause). N o w
there comes a movie about the
'50s as they really were in the
Flatbush section of Brooklyn.
The Lords of Flatbush is an
honest attempt to show the
sometimes painful metamorphi-
sis of four young "Lords" from
boys to men.
The story concerns the adven-
tures of Chico, who tries to
establish more than just a
drive-in romance with the WA-
SPy daughter of a colonel, who
is trying to be more than just a

Friday night score; Stanley,
whose nickname "Moose" hides
the fact that he is a sensitive
dreamer of better things and
his pregnant girl Francie,
whose dream in life is to own a
$1600 wedding ring.
The film, crudely shot on the
sly in the confines of Flatbush,
is both humorous and sad. The
performances of Perry King,
Sylvester Stallone (outstanding
as Stanley) and Henry Wink-
ler (TV's Fonzie) are mirrors
of a past generation, lost some-
where between Polish weddings
and soda-shop symphony.
-Chuck Bloom
Terminal Man
- The Movies, Briarwood
Terminal stars George Segal
in a fascinating failure of a mo-
tion picture. Directed and writ-
ten by Mike Hodges from Mich-
ael Crichton's best-selling novel,
Terminal is one-third interest-
ing and two-thirds ridiculous.
Crichton's story of a slightly
disturbed paranoid psychotic
who submits to an operation for
a cure to his "disease" was at
best fairly nice paperback ma-
terial.
On celluloid, the results of this
complex and frightening futuris-
tic medical technology make a
big joke of Segal and seems
closer to a Dean Martin shoot-
'em-up than a valid comment on
where we're all headed.
The problem lies somewhere
between the fact that G e o r g e
is making far too many pictures
and the sophomoric essence of
the material. Jean Hackett and
Donald Moffat are also featured
in this terminally slick shock
treatment.
-Michael Wilson
Chinatown
Fox Village
Roman Polanski has a repu-
!ation for being a great direc-
tor. However, he also has a
reputation for being inconsist-
ent. His latest film, China-
town, is possibly the best film
he has ever made. It is a thrill-
er mystery of the first order.
It is the tale of a private in-
vestigator, Jack Nicholson, who
is caught up in a scandal and
a series of murders involving
the leading citizens of Los An-
geles of the 1930's.
The action is fast, and the
acting is the best in years. Ni-
cholson plays his role with a

cool and cynical style reminis-
cent of Bogart. Faye Dunaway
plays the woman who is trying
to run away from her past in
the best performance of her
career,
Polanski has been compared
to Hitchcock, but the compari-
son is not justified. Polanski has
proven in this film that he is
equal to any of the great direc-
tors of mystery movies.
-David Warren
Pink Floyd
The Movies, Briarwood
A "cinema concert" that is,
but, it is not, alas, "more than
a movie." Basically, it is just
a performance -- on film -in
the 3000-year-old ruins of a
Pompeii coliseum, empty save
for the sound crew, the cam-
eramen, the wind, and t h e
grass - interjected with a lot
of aimless footage while the
soundtrack plays.
Hot lava and bubbling mud.
Agonized faces from ancient sta-
tues and mosaics; the Pompeii
ruins. Pink Floyd's collosus
speakers. The four Floyds wan-
dering through barren land-
scapes and similar exsistential
scenes.
The music, however, perform-
ed live for this film, is close
to brilliant. In spite of their
irecent commercial turnings,
Ipink Floyd is still one of the
!host original, inventive, a n d
'dynamic groups at work today.
While the cinematics of this
flick do not add anything to
their music, they do not detract,
either. After all, the film brings
one a lot closer to the group
than they will everget in con-
cert. The curious can get to
see how they make all those
weird and intriguing sounds that
they do.
The film also includes some
studio footage, and interviews.

For Pete's Sake
Michigan
Barbra Streisand stars in this
quasi-sequel to the very success-
ful What's Up, Doe? Pete's pace
is just as frantic and some of
the lines are just as funny as
the material in the original
Peter Bogdanovich feature. Bas-
Ically, however, Pete a i m p1 y
doesn't stack up.
Streisand portrays a harried
housewife who, having plunged
her husband into debt to cover
a nebulous investment, now
must come up with a scheme
to raise $3000 in a hurry. Her
ideas: prostitution and c a t t 1le
rustling. (That's part of the
humor, gang.)
It's an enjoyable picture, but
it could have been better.
-David Blomquist
Love and Anarchy
Campus
This is beatifully constructed
Italian pornography, starring
Giancarlo Gianinni in a sort
of Day of the Jackal takeoff
about a man who has a bullet
with the initials "B.M." that
he plans to fire into Mussolini's
skull.
Unfortunately, Tunin, our
hero, bumps into a pretty
streetwalker (portrayed incred-
ibly well by Lina Polito), a n d
becomes momentarily detoured,
Many of the scenes take place
in the inevitable house of ill
repute, and director-writer Lin-
da Wertmuller makes this an
advantage by using real-life lo-
cations and brilliant co-stars.
Wertmuller is a fine technic-
ian and will no doubt be heard
from again. She is a welcome
addition to an industry that is
desperately lacking in female
directors.
-Michael Wilson

Michigan Daily
Arts

Nixon career nears end
(Continued from Page 4)
two southerners to the Supreme Court -
Clement Haynesworth and G. Harold
Carswell. He bitterly berated the Senate
for what he described as an anti-South-
ern attitude.
In the field of foreign policy, Nixon
achieved almost total applause for his
dramatic visits to China and the Soviet
Union. He initiated a series of troop
withdrawals. from Vietnam and succeed-
ed in begining peace negotiations in
Paris.

On, Nov. 7, 1972, Nixon and Agnew
swept to re-election on a tidal wave
of votes that carried 49 states and won
60.7 per cent of the total vote. Nixon
overwhelmed Democrat George McGov-
ern by nearly 18 million votes - t h e
greatest in electoral history -- and had
the endorsement of 47,167,319 Americans.
But then began the astonishing events
known as Watergate - and his greatest
crisis was upon him.
And so, just when Nixon should have
been basking in the glory of his great-
est triumphs, he was fighting for his
political life.
Watergate - his seventh crisis - was
his undoing.

AS VICE PRESIDENT, Richard Nixon, talked with then Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during their tour of an
scan exhibition in Moscow in July of 1959. Identifiable at right, front is Leonid Brezhnev, current leader of the
Union.