ARTS &The Michigan Daily Friday, January 8, 1982 Page 5 t qw .. . - - - --. 1 ro Four Tops travel back By Mitch Cantor IF YOU'RE EVER considering a trip down a musical memory highway, take The Four Tops exit-you might never want to come back. The Tops, together now for an un- believable 27 years, turned in a stellar performance at Second Chance Wed- nesday night, effectively recreating that famous Motown sound and spirit from the mid-sixties. The packed crowd certainly seemed convinced by the 75 minute set from the Tops, who were backed by a ten-piece band. The sixties were present in almost every form: the same snazzy Tops out- fits, a well-mixed recreation of the Detroit R&B sound, the famous hippie slang, and, of course, a string of the hits that made the quartet famous ("I Can't Help Myself," "Standing in the Shadows of Love," "Bernadette," etc.). For those who have seen the modern- day Dylan or Stones and wonder exac- tly how funny the Tops looked-they didn't. While they were obviously older, the physical changes didn't seem to make much difference when they delivered their goods with the same zest and pizzazz as in their earlier years. Well, maybe a little less piz- zazz; the dancing wasn't quite up to snuff. What really made the Four Tops ageless was the pleasant surprise that this concert wasn't just another "K-tel presents the greatest hits of the Four Tops" deal. It was a well-performed, mesmerizing set of great songs from a foursome whose only goal now is ap- parently the same as it was a quarter of a century ago-to give the audience the best show possible. And equipped with the fun Motown choreography and vocalist Levi Stubbs (certainly one of the best R&B singers of all time), all the Four Tops had to do was to be themselves. And they did it very well. The early moments of the evening warned of possible disappointment as an overcrowded and anxious audience waited impatiently for the band to ap- pear. Many seemed imposed upon by a film crew that was recording the con- cert. When the musicians finally did ap. pear, they introduced the Four Tops with a seven-minute instrumental. But when the singers came out-well, not much else mattered. Standard graph by Martin V ~1 Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters make change in 'Pennies from Heaven.' Pennites cashes I on fantasy -Stanoopen 4-pen4 working strand set - 585-407-4 List $39.95 - Sale price $25.08 -Pen cleanin -aerosol 59-0600 160 ml List $8.95 Sale price $3.50 By Adam Knee p ENNIES FROM. HEAVEN is a unique, fascinating, and intelligent musical drama, one of the best com- mercial entertainments from Hollywood in some time. It is a portrait of life in depression- era America, starring Steve Martin as Arthur, a sheet-music salesman down on his luck, beset by financial woes and a frigid wife. He manages to find some joy and meaning in life through his love for Eileen, played by Bernadette Peters, a schoolteacher who becomes pregnant by him and is forced to leave her job. Arthur deserts her, compelled by pressures beyond his control, and she ends up making her way as a prostitute. The lovers are eventually reunited, only to have their fortunes wane further. During this unhappy tale, Arthur and 1ileen manage to keep hope through their dreams, which are brought to life for us in some of the most lavish dance numbers filmed in decades. The music used is all authentic recordings of hit songs from the thirties, which the per- former lip-synch with impressive *precision. At the start of one such number, Ar- thur futilely attempts to obtain a bank loan to aid his dying music business. Rejected, he insults the loan officer, but suddenly the two kiss; the film has shif- ted to the world of Arthur's happy fan- tasy. They proceed to sing "Yes, Yes, My Baby Said Yes!" and are joined by the rest of the bank staff. Leggy tellers ,lod Arthur up with more money than can hold, and he leads them in a marvelous tap dance sequence on an enormous art deco set, complete with Busby Berkley-type bird's-eye shots and monolithic props. Comedian Steve Martin may seem an unlikely successor to Fred Astaire. In- deed, Pennies From Heaven is Martin's fist professional dance appearance, and he clearly lacks Astaire's effortless -grace. He appears highly conscious of his movement, distracted from the emotion he should be conveying. Never- theless, Martin has a kind of crazed en-' thusiasm that helps bring us into Ar- thur's fantasy world-a distinctive wild-eyed, wildly grinning look that proves irresistable and helps pull the routines off. Martin's performance is more lacking when it comes to the serious drama. He is convincingly naive and sincere, yet he tramples through the subtle graduations of behavior the script, offers him, playing up Arthur's pleasant and not-so-pleasant qualities to their grotesque extremes. The film's impressive performances come from Bernadette Peters and Jessica Harper (Arthur's wife). Peters convincingly manages to be at once in- nocent and devastatingly sensual, Har- per at one shrewish and pitifully vulnerable. Both performers bring out all the subtleties of their characters' emotions, never missing a dramatic beat. Such ambivalence of character is not gratuitous in the world scriptwriter, Dennis Potter creates for us. All sup- posedly good characters prove capable of performing the lowliest deeds, while ostensibly bad characters reveal a glimmer of true goodness. In Potter's view, decisions and actions are deter- mined by something without, rather th:i within; every character is a vic- tim a circumstance, of a malevolently arranged external order. As one of Ar- thur's songsheets tells us, "It's not chance, it's fate." The same people and places come into the lives of Arthur and Eileen again and again, reaffirming a structure to their existences. - Just' as Potter's dramatic world is structured and stylized, so is cinematographer Gordon . Willis's visual world. Key settings are captured in carefully lit and composed shots which give them as much visual impor- tance as thematic importance; some shots are even exact replications of the realist painting of Edward Hopper. Un- forgettable is the bleak image of a highway underpass where many events that determine the course of Arthur's life occur-a place he calls "nowhere." What would in any other film be dreamily romantic scenes are here un- dermined by harsh overlighting or lac- k of almost any lighting; fate can never be fully escaped, even in fantasy. Herbert Ross's direction of all this talent is, like Martin's performance, a bit heavy handed. Horrific elements of his reality are sometimes so em- phasized that they inappropriately spill over into fantasy. Nevertheless, he shows a consistency and control necessary for a film with so many shadings of character and reality. The film is believable and hard-hitting, despite its excursions into fantasy. Indeed, it is in such fantasy that meaning, in the film's world, ultimately lies. Arthur and Eileen can only tran- scend their unfortunate reality through love, a kind of mutual fantasy which cannot be fully communicated in the everyday language they continually stumble over. Love and escape come about only when the two pass into the realm of song; it is the fantasy of song that allows meaning in their lives. Open 7days a week. Michigan Union. - - -- -- n u ( ea __ ,. . l 4 > t '' t + ' v '. , y " - °. 1 y erg take on the challenge... realize the future 9 . Spend r " ' .. t " r:,: . -t. ' V' "'". 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