Cinema Papers no. 68 March 1988 (2025)

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6 QUESTION AND ANSARA: Martha Ansara
and the pursuit of happiness

8 STARS AND BARS: Nick Cave and the Rich
Kids go directly to jail .

4.; 3‘ ,_
. r‘!-7"J‘u.’¢-2?“? - '

12 BACK IN THE USSR: Filrnmaking after
" glasnost

.‘.
\

I L’AMOUR DE GLAMOUR

1§ ' comvzssgtoms A“: ‘ E

'nEéB.EEs W »[...]Feathers. deep
Ocean, Ocean

32 THE SIGN OF FOUR: Taking cues from
Channel 4

34 ROSY VIEW: Channel 4's co[...]Freedom, The

,f'&.m1'1y, Fatal Attraction, Made In Heaven, P . .»

“ ?Ma.non Des Sources, Rita, Sue And Bob Too,
? Sherman's March, Tampopo, Planes, Trains And R Q
Automobiles, 28 Up.

\ .
I _ \ '.<
50 BOOKS:[...]MATTERS ‘J’ ' 5"
_ :52 CLOSE-UP: Jim McBride andwhat ~

«£9;/ENSORSHIP: The November and December
-‘ ‘”‘ decisions

.’:§§-so EACK PAGE: March and April film buffs
"_-7-. diary

Signed articles represent the views of their
author. and not necessarily those of the
editor. While every care is taken with
manuscripts and materials supplied to the
magazine. neither the editor nor the pub-
lis[...]loss or
damage which may arise. This magazine
may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the express permission of the

‘copyright owner. Cinema Papers is
published every two months by MTV,
Publishing Ltd[...]Limited,
No 68. March 1988

‘Recommended price only.

Cover: Nick Cave in Ghosts . , . Of The
Civil Dead

cinema Papers is published
with financial assistance from the

AUSTRALIAN FILM
COMMISSION
and FILM VICTORIA.

\

illlllan Burt is a treelance writer
currently based in New York.

Flaflaele Capuio is a freelance
writer on film.

Maw Golberl is a Sydney-based
film researcher and writer.

Felicity Golllns is a lecturer in film
theory and criticism at Melbourne
Eollege of Advanced Education.

John Gonomos is a Sydney writer
on film.

Hunter Cordaiy is a film writer
based in Sydney.

Peter Graven is co-editor of
Soripsi.

Barbara Creed is a lecturer in
cinema studies at La Trobe
Elniversiiy.

l-iiluw Evans is a broadcaster and
media consultant.

Freda Freiberg is a Melbourne-
based lecturer and writer on film.

ena Gleason is a tutor in cinema
studies at La Trobe University.

Anna Grieve is a Sydney filmmaker
and writer.

Ered Harden is a film and television
prucer specialising in special
effects.

lélnila ilaiuin is a freelance writer
tiaseél in Ganberra and specialising
' V, «Inese affairs.

Brian ileftrey is a freelance writer
based in Canberra.

Raul Kallna is a journalist at The
liilenslcl.

nanlele Kemp is a broadcaster on
" ' and tutor at Qrmond College,
erslty of Melbourne.

Reier Kemp is a freelance writer on

Adrian Martin is a freelance film

Scott Murray is a film director,
writer and former editor of Cinema
Racers.

Mili‘lr’~i Ellie‘. ,. is a freelance writer on
film.

Blllgand lane Rouit are a couple
of Melbourne academics.

Raffaello iliraviato —- a guy who's
araund.

i

4 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS[...]the Melbourne Film
Festival for 28 years (1954-80 and 1983).
During that time he oversaw its rise to what
many considered Australia ’s premier
retrospective festival and one of the world’s more
important.

The Festival introduced thousands of
Victorians to a world cinema poorly represented
in commercial cinemas: that is, outside that of
Hollywood and Britain. His stewardship
overlapped the French Ne[...]ish revival, the flowering of the
Czechoslovakian and Yugoslavian cinemas, anal,
of course, the triumphant Hungarian cinema of
jancso, Szabo and Gabor.

Erwin ’s selection of films, in conjunction with
his committees, led many film buffs to rename
the event the Middle-European Festival. For
those audacious enough to challenge the director
on this, Erwin would display all his passionate
eloquence, arguing that he chose films only on
the basis of their quality, not their country of
origin. If it so happened that every year
Hungary produced the best films. . .

Erwin was equally forthright about his belief
in short films and went so far as to prowl the
cincma’s foyer to order back inside those who
preferred to wait it out till the feature started.
Quite rightly, he recognised the short film as an
art form in itself and not just as a testing
ground for would—be feature directors. (The
government bodies trailed him badly on this.)

In judging Erwin ’s time at the Festival, it is

not enough to survey the extraordinary number
of excellent films exhibited, or to praise the
efficient way the Festival was run, le[...]ls have another cultural function, often
ignored, and that is the learning environment
they provide for filmmakers. Many writers have
felt that Melbourne’: filmmakers are more
European in style and content than those from
the rest of Australia. If this is so, Erwin ’s
selection of films was an important factor.

But Erwin was often a more direct influence,
encouraging and inspiring those local filmmakers
who took the time to understand the man and
allow him to be their tutor. He was stern about
what he thought was second rate, but praised
warmly and sincerely those efforts of which he
was proud.

Erwin was also a force in his pioneering work
at the Australian Film Institute. In that great
Australian tradition, his work there is today
little recorded or lauded, and, sadly, often
ignored by subsequent administrations.

A greater regret, however, is the one felt by
many who had seen Erwin ’s attempts to launch
his own film productions thwarted by his ill-
health. What Erwin would have brought to such
productions — his passionate, romantic nat[...]peanness, his search for the first rank
— could only have enriched the Australian
industry.

He is already missed.

Scott Murray

Frames, the 1988 Festival of Australian Film and Video, takes place in Adelaide from 18 to 25
March. Haydn Keenan’s Pandemonium and Dennis 0’Rourke’s Cannibal Tours will have their
Australian premieres, and there will be a range of special events and discussion sessions. For more
information, write to Frames, P.0. Box 33, Rundle Mall, Adelaide 5000. Cannibal Tours, soon to
be released by Ronin Films, is described by Dennis 0’Rourke as two journeys: “The first is that
depicted — rich and bourgeois tourists, on a luxury cruise up the mysterious Sepik River, in the
jungles of Papua New Guinea . . . the packaged version of a ‘heart of darkness’. The second
journey (the real text of the film) is a metaphysical one. It is an attempt to discover the place of
‘the Other’ in the popular imagination. It affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or
misunderstood) reasons why ‘civilised’ people wish to encounter the ‘primitive‘.”

MASCARADE —— competent specialists in Period Makeup —
very natural “No-Makeup” lo[...]sy, Prosthetics.

MASCARADE — the Makeup Agency in Melbourne for all
makeup needs.

The agency has g[...]Our New Zealand correspond-
ent, Mike Nicolaidi, is unable to
continue writing for Cinema
Papers, because of increased
commitments. Mike has kept
readers in touch with the latest
issues and developments in the
New Zealand film industry for
many years, and we are grateful
for his contribution. We will
continue to give New Zealand
regular coverage in the maga-
zine.

Australian short films are being
screened on Qantas flights. The
screenings, a joint project of
Qantas and the Australian Film
Institute, will reach an audience
of more than 100,000. The first
four shorts are Looking For
Space Things (John Armstrong),
The Hu[...]ohn Taylor), The
Aardvark Song (Claire Bam-
ford) and The Fogbrook Thing
(Mark Osborne).

Theatre Arts, established in 1984 to ensure the highest
standard of training for future makeup artists.

Enquiries for Agency and School: Shirley Reynolds on
(03) 266 2087 or (AH)[...]mmer school, ‘Hearts of the
World — Melodrama and Politics in Cinema’, will be held at
the University of Stirling, Scotland, from 23 to 30 July. It will
examine the cultural and ideological meanings of film
melodrama by looking at its historical antecedents in a range
of cultural practices: theatre, the novel and painting, the
interdependent relationship of melodrama and realism and
melodrama’s capacity to transcend national and cultural
differences. Further information is available from Alpa Patel,
Summer School Secretary, BFI, 21 Stephen Street, London
WIP IPL.

The revitalised Australian Screen Studies Association in
Victoria is organising a range of activities for the coming year.
The first of these will be ‘Zips, Whips and Clips’, a weekend
forum on the cinema and secret pleasures and themes of totem
and taboo, to be held at the State Film Theatre in April.
Seduction The Cruel Woman will screen on 9 April at 2 pm
and Blue Velvet on 10 April at 2 pm, both followed by
speakers and a debate.

Correspondence to ASSA can be directed to Anne Hutton at
the State Film Centre of Victoria, 1 Macarthur Street, East
Melbourne 3002.

Women in Film and Television have
compiled the first national register of
women in film, TV and video. For more
information contact WFT at P.O. B[...]81 2058. The register
costs $7 plus postage.

The Australian Film
Institute’s extensive film
and video distribution
catalogue is available,
free of charge, from the
AFI, 47 Littl[...]Full ran e of services from ro’ect develo ment to roduction,
S P J P P
post production and marketing for theatrical, non-theatrical and
educational programs.

FACILITIES

O Broadcast st[...]on studio with Newsmatte, AEC editor,
lo-band VHS and Umatic facilities.

VIDEO COURSES 8: WORKSHOPS

0 Includes introductory and comprehensive video production.
screenwriting, production management, creative editing and
children's television.

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 5

And because I have a sort of
psychoanalytic turn of mind anyway, it led
me in all sorts of directions, thinking
about dependence and independence,
nations and personal relations and so on.
Things I had perhaps been stirring
around and stewing around inside me for
quite a while had an outlet in this film. I
had originally planned it as a
documentary. I had some idea that I
would pick up the camera, because that's
actually what I really like to do, and I
would walk around with the camera and
just talk to people all over Australia about
related subjects. But anyway it's very
different from what the film turned out to
be — a new and different kind of
docudrama. And the interesting thing
about the film as a docudrama is that
most docudramas are acted films which
have a flavour of documentary. In this
film, some of the documentary has the
flavour of drama, and I think that that's
unique.

Was that a conscious decision?

No. Almost to the end of shooting I
thought I was going to make the first kind
of documentary. But there were so many
different inputs to the film that were quite
unpredictable — one of them was the
camera style developed by Michael Edols
— in fact it had a different flavour that I'm
coming to be quite interested in.

You were looking for a more
documentary style of shooting the
film?

Definitely. In fact I felt we would be doing
many of the scenes in a sort of
psychodrama manner, which was
something I'd done in 1970, with Film For
Discussion, and had been very interested
in pursuing ever since. But we didn't. In
part, I think it was also because of the
participation of Alex Glasgow, who has
written a lot for television, and because
he was able to write lines that were very
interesting, the actors wanted to use

them.

And why did you decide to set the
film in Fremantle?

Well there were several steps that led to
that decision. First of all I sat down with

6 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

QUESTION

—,A.l\ll3—

ANSARA

Martha Ansara’s The Pursuit Of Happiness combines
documentary and drama, looks at nuclear families and
nuclear ships, alliances between people and alliances

between countries. Set in Fremantle during the America’s
Cup defence, it explores its themes through the eyes of
Anna, a woman trying to make sense of the ties between
couples and nations. ANNA GRIEVE talked to Martha Ansara
about the making of the film[...]

Once we had decided that would be
the structure of the film, we looked
around for a way to make it in Sydney,
and we could not find the conditions that
would allow us to write the story and
make the film with a sufficient amount of
documentary in it. If we had written a
drama — and almost to the end, I kept
thinking we'd made a documentary ~ if
we’d written a drama, well perhaps we
could have set it anywhere. But for us we
had to find a place where the relationship
between Australia and the United States
gave us enough of a contradiction in real
life in which to put a personal relationship.
I'd spent quite a lot of time in Fremantle
and it seemed that the America's Cup
and the development of an excessive lust
for money and wealth and power, in
conjunction with the fact that the warships
were coming in there every couple of
months, made this really the only place to
make the film. I had some ideas about
character and so on, and I went to
Fremantle and Madelon Wilkens and I did
a lot of research there for quite some time
and came up with some more ideas.

Then luckily someone said to me,
“There's this bloke Alex Glasgow, he's
sort of along the same lines as you." l’d
seen When The Boat Comes In, which I
thought was fabulous, and when I
realised that not only was he the man that

sang the song, he had actually written a
couple of the episodes, I thought that I
should meet him. Alex was very good. He
helped me out of sticky places and was
critical without pushing me about the
ideas. We developed a structure for the
film together. Then we spent a lot of time
looking for people to be in the film. And
then with these people and with Alex we
had a two—week workshop, where we'd
try things out and then Alex would go
home and write them up to try to pull
together things that we'd done.
Sometimes we wrote a sort of a script,
sometimes he wrote some alternatives,
and then the actors at the time on the
spot would work from that script that we'd
developed. But although that sounds
spontaneous, an awful lot of thought and
analysis had gone into it over months and
months.

And how about the West Australian
film community? How did they relate
to you as a Sydney filmmaker?

In Perth they are very sensitive, and
rightly so, about the fact that people are
imported into Perth to make films and the
local people don’t get the work they
ought to get. But we did have a lot of
people working on the film, especially
you[...]experience who were just fabulous. The
cameraman and the sound recordist
came from the East, but that’s about all,
All the people in the film were local.

Did you specifically set out to cast
non-actors in certain roles?

There’s hardly any actors in the film in
fact. The main woman and man are
actors, Alex Glasgow has done a little
acting, and the American is someone
who is actually a film director who has
been an actor too - he's very good —
and other than that, there aren’t any
actors in the film. For the father»in-law we
had wanted to get an actor and couldn't
find one who could do the job — they
were all too English and theatrical and so
we decided we would just have to have
the real thing. We wrote to Equity about it
and they said that for people who were
not playing themselves we should have
actors. They were very helpful; they
understood the nature of the film, and the
nature of the film is that no money goes
to the production company until everyone
is paid off. All the investors are people
who are really not in it for the money but
for the issues, and any profit goes to the
peace movement. So it is a different kind
of film. I wasn’t paid a wage and Dick
Mason, the executive producer, actually
had to put in money. He worked at
Kennedy Miller so that he could provide
this film with his resources.

Had you planned from the very
beginning to use a lot of news
footage?

Yes. If we had known we were doing a
drama we would have had a tighter script
I guess, if we had had the time, but in
fact all of those things were done after we
had done the location shooting. We came
back East and analysed what we had

done, and tried to see what material we
needed. Some of the news material we
had gathered when we were in the West
and made into programs already, but
most of it we did afterwards. So we had
to research all the archives, get all the
stuff together and make video programs.
I'd never worked in video before and I
was a bit shocked at how expensive. it
was. But again, we got a lot of help.

What about the ratio between media
footage and drama?

People have suggested that there‘s too
much media material, but in fact it's a
mere fragment of the programs we
actually made. We didn't understand how
strong the dramatic side of it would be
and how difficult it would then be to insert
these television programs that Anna
watches. In fact one of them that is 21/2
minutes long was once in its entirety a
wonderful program of nine minutes. There
was no way to put it in. I think we’Il have
to release it separately. We made a nine-
minute program on the history of the
military ties between Australia and the
United States.

Always we were trying to work out how
to balance these things out and it was
very difficult because we didn't always
have the material in the drama we
needed for intercutting with the
documentary. Kit Guyatt is an absolutely
wonderful editor and we just wrestled with
it.

And after this film did you say you
were never going to make another
one?

No I'm never going to make another one
again, for sure this time. The kids look at
me and roll their eyes and say, “You said
that before.” But making a film on a very
low budget like this is absolutely gruelling.
It's exploitative to other people — sure
they said they wanted to work for basic
wages or they wanted to volunteer, but I
just don’t know. Perhaps if everybody
worked for nothing, then l’d do it. Or if
everybody could get paid and there was
enough time and money, then I'd do it.

Has winning the Byron Ken[...]lped you at all?

Yes, it's been fabulous. I have to think of
Byron all the time which is bizarre,
because I can’t say that he and I saw eye
to eye when we were in the [Sydney
Filmmakers] Co—op together; not that we
had big arguments, but he was in a
different direction from me. I feel as if I'm
the bride of Byron, he's come down from
heaven and I think of him all the time.
That's really changed my life, thinking of
Byron all the time. But more than that, it
has a very practical function. It says on all
our propaganda, our leaflets and so on,
“Awarded the prestigious Byron Kennedy
Award”. And this seems to make a
difference to people. At first I didn't know
what to do with it, but then people told
me and now . . . I'm not very keen on
those kinds of things and I feel very
embarrassed about getting it. I tell people
what its really for is for being a good
Communist.

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 7

hosts . . . Of The Civil Dead concerns itself with the social and moral complexity

of life inside a maximum security prison. It is a movie made by a team with

almost no previous feature film experience — the key people have considerable

recognition and notoriety in the field of music videos. Producer Evan English[...]sic videos for about 10 years
(with Paul Goldman, in a company called The Rich Kids). Actor and co-
screenwriter Nick Cave achieved fame with his band The Birthday Party. As a
solo performer his songs have become the very literary narratives of a wild
imagination and he has also been writing plays and a novel.

Director John Hillcoat made short films and music videos and has written two
feature scripts. In 1984 he began a correspondence with Jack Henry Abbott, the
convicted murderer who became a literary celebrity with his book In The Belly Of
The Beast. This led to his collaboration on Ghosts.

The film is not a documentary in any sense, but it harbours no romantic
illusions about the circumstances of prison life. It might seem an ugly and volatile
subject for a group of people who are best known for putting the visual music to
pop songs.

But society has always had difficulties in dealing with people who don’t
conform to the rules, whether they are criminal outcasts who remove themselves
from the[...]ves from the fashionable artistic mainstream with an unorthodox
vision and methods that can be construed as rebellious.

To research the movie Evan English and John Hillcoat talked to prison guards,
psychologists and people who had been to prison. They also made a tour of 15 or
16 American “new generation” prisons that are decorated in subduing pastel
colours and patrolled by the unceasing gaze of electronic eyes. The prison in
Ghosts most closely resembles one in Marion, Illinois. “Marion is a Level 6,
Federal Penitentiary and it’s the end of the line,” says English. “It has the so-
called ‘most violent criminals in American history’. What you find when you
actually go there is that there are a tremendous amount of very intelligent and
articulate people who have Violent tendencies who cannot adjust to institutional
life. That’s why people go to Marion. And what you find there —- in line with this
level of intelligence and articulateness —— is that they are spiritual and philo-
sophical leaders of various sub-cultures.[...]hood, the Black Moslems, Hindus, American Indians and Mexican mafia.
Through a process of what they call ‘selective incapacitation’ potential trouble
makers are scooped up and isolated. What you’ve got in Marion is like either the
bottom of the barrel or th[...]

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 9

separated by varying degrees of mobility and privileges.
“The first is ‘population’. They’ve got freedom of
moveme[...]y’ve got TV up
there, porno, they just shoot up and smoke dope. It’s like
St Kilda really. Then in the maximum security you have a
fair few intellectuals, a lot of charismatic, philosophically
developed people and they have very, very restricted
movement, one out of a cell, one at a time, handcuffed,
escorted by three officers. Then we have what we call
solitary confinement, the hole. It’s one long corridor, it’s
more like conventional prisons are and you don’t need
this pyschological reasoning or anything, you just throw
the man in there and lock him away for six months.”

The characters were shaped by people that they had
read of and met and finally by the people who portray
them in the movie, fleshing out their roles. The story takes
up thematic concerns that come out of the compromised
reality that is the basis of prison operation. “It’s got
nothing to do with going back into the real world, let’s
face it, nothing at all, and that’s what a lot of this film is
about. Probably one of the strongest lines in this film —
and in the ABC documentary Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind as
well — is that patently, prison makes people worse,”
English says.

“One of the contentions of Ghosts — and it’s a very
contentious issue — is that in fact that may be deliberate,
that the perpetuation of the criminal class and the
acceleration of criminal tendencies via prison is in fact a
useful device for society. That’s one of the film’s thematic
concerns. And the purpose of that is that you have, to use
hackneyed old cliches, the land owning class and the
workers, and the perpetuation of the criminal. The fear of
the criminal justifies things like the police. The police are
nothing but a social control mechanism to maintain the
status quo.”

While Ghosts was being filmed in October and Novem-
ber of last year in a disused factory in Port Melbourne,
television viewers around Austral[...]ing of the documentary, Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
in which madness, suicide, nervous disease, sexual
licence, drug addiction and a brutal manipulative hier-
archy in an enclosed society operating without self-
control, discipline or shame, had broken the inmates
down to cynical barbaric rabble. And most significantly,
in Pentridge’s Jika Jika division (a ‘new age’ section not
unlike the fictional prison in Ghosts) five prisoners died in
a fire after barricading themselves in to protest that their
treatment was inhuman. There is a growing concern and

10 —— MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

|mI43;Iy\, Auuar

awareness about prisons, but can a movie base itself on
such potent reality?

“How do you turn reality into some sort of drama? You
don’t,” English says. “All you can do is take the bones of
reality and, in all fairness to the people who endure 10
years in a cell, what we are doing here doesn’t relate in
any shape or form. You can take the bones of a dramatic
form and you hope, you do more than hope, you desire
that the final form has significance for the viewer. You lose
sight of the fact that this actually happens to a lot of
people, rightly or wrongly, and without any morality
attached to it. It’s really important that if you’re attempt-
ing to say anything, in some way you’ve got to have your
springboard as reality otherwise it’s impotent. The overall
intention of the movie is to have an impact, not just in a
sensational sense but in a fundamental sense, on those
who view it.”

Evan English and Paul Goldman began making music
videos while studying film at Swinburne College, and
used crews made up of fellow students, many of whom
stayed with them and are working on Ghosts. Paul Gold-
man is director of photography on Ghosts. The Rich Kids
began making music videos when it was still a new
medium and they drew attention to themselves with
youthful, brattish behaviour and developed a reputation
for arrogance. English’s interest in the subject matter of
Ghosts developed over a long period, while he was engaged
in making the videos.

“It’s not a sudden development of conscience. I think
that a particular turning point was realising what a rat
race the music industry was, and going to America. You’re
a colonial boy from the suburbs of Melbourne and you
land yourself in Los Angeles. What an eye opener! We
spent about 2 % years in LA as well as living in London.
You develop as you get older but I guess it does look
strange when you look at ‘Walk On By’ 00 J0 Zep) and
you look at this film. But then in the same year that we
made the film we made ‘Something So Strong’ (Crowded
House) which is absolutely unabashed romantic cuteness.
It’s good; who wants toand the rough-as-guts stuff that no one would play.
We do like to play games and our videos were about teach-
ing ourselves filmic tricks as much as anything else and
doing it in the commercial medium. There were two
things that we wanted to learn when we made videos: we
wanted to learn how to move the camera and we also
wanted to gain commercial credibility and this film is the
result of doing that. Our videos are as slick as hell and we
worked it like a charm. You go to Hollywood and they’re
amazed and they think that you can really do something.
It also keeps them guessing in the sense that only by
having the commercial reel that we had can you make
something that goes against the commercial sort of cliched
grain. If we had a whole bunch of stuff like ‘Nick The
Stripper’ (The Birthday Party) on that, or similar
material, they’d just say ‘You’re a bunch of arty wankers’
and ‘Fuck off’ and you’d never get an opportunity.”

Ghosts features a couple of musicians who have been in
some of the Rich Kids’ most inventive music videos, Dave
Mason (of the Reels) and Nick Cave. “Nick plays a guy
called Maynard who is brought into the maximum
security unit. He is an absolute psychotic lunatic, mad as
hell, who upsets basically every side of the fenc[...], the prisoners, everybody hates his guts. He’s a
bad piece of chemistry at a particularly bad time. He pro-
vokes everybody. Out of a 90-strong cast only 25 are actors
and what we found is that the non-actors are really good.”
Some of the actors are ex-prisoners.

The marketing of the movie is also going to take
advantage of the connection with the music world. Nick
Cave, along with Bad Seeds group members Mick Harvey
and Blixa Bargeld are doing the music for the movie.
“Blixa makes noises, you couldn’t call it music as such.

7 V . . -- ii:-Ki - is
TATTOO YOU: Roy Farrell

There will be some music but Nick and Mick and Blixa’s
brief is to contribute sound effects, atmosphere and music.
There’s going to be an album and all that sort of stuff.
They’re tremendously excited, Nick in particular, about
the opportunity to create something aurally around an
idea that he’s taken by. He really loves prison, he loves[...]s was made for the modest sum of $1.6 million.
“What I’d found when we’d made music videos is that I
cannot be answerable to anybody,” says English. “We
work best creatively when there’s monetary control.
That’s not just my personality, I think it’s a constant that
artistic control is economic control, and so what I wanted
to do was to be basically the executive producer.”

Though Ghosts is a brave and ambitious project,
English is aware of the shortcomings and difficulties of a
small budget production. “We are talking about a million
dollar film. We are making a motion picture that we have
less money per minute to spend on than we work with on
music Videos. We’re talking about working for $10,000 a
minute -— finished footage -— and we are talking about up
to $20,000 on music videos, without the addition of the
overheads and post-production that we have here. We’re
limited by money. We’re limited by our own inexperi-
ence. We’re limited by time.

“The whole thing has been less than a dream ride.
That’s been accentuated by a lack of money and inexperi-
ence: we’re talking the director, the[...]ing designer — We’re all on our first feature
and that’s a lot to overcome. It does show, but hopefully
our raw intuition and talent makes up for it in some ways.

“We have made mistakes and we’ll continue to make
mistakes but you find often enough that people with a lot
of movie experience probably make worse ones, and
spend a lot more money making worse mistakes and the
net worth of what they’re doing is zilch. I think that one
of the unique things is that we control our destiny right
here, between John and me, and we make the film that we
want to make and that’ s unique. And the sort of family
that’s grown up through the music videos and out of Swin-
burne, it’s a nice extended family and that’s the sort of
passion that I like.”

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Sceptics dismissed it as diplomatic, if not propa-
gandistic, rhetoric, typical of a polished politician. The
changes, if any, were expected to be little more than
cosmetic.

Since the beginnings of the socialist state, politics and
film had been inextricably linked in an uneasy relation-
ship. Party lines dictated policy and vigilant bureaucrats
protected the ideological sa[...]sorship. If party lines changed, art was
expected to follow. Those who wished to make bold
statements had to retreat behind the safety of history,
allegory and the classics. Punishment for not toeing the
line was silence. So, for many filmmakers the course of
least resistance was easier. Now the new leader was
encouraging a swing so far the other way it was difficult
to know how to bridge the gap between word and action.

Yet Gorbachev’s speech became the catalyst and
official seal of approval for the most dramatic u[...]s nationalisation of ‘the
most important art’ in the cause of the October
revolution.

Both Lenin and Gorbachev had shown an acute
awareness of the power of film, yet Gorbach[...]years ago, Goskino,
which for so long maintained a stranglehold over crea-
tive decisions, ideological direction, production and dis-
tribution. Lenin had centralised the state film
machinery, now Gorbachev wanted to decentralise it.

Filmmakers who had long been dissatisfied with what
they considered the stagnant state of the art were
sparked to action by Gorbachev’s words. After all, what
did they have to lose? For a considerable number, their
films were sitting ‘frozen’ on the shelves.[...]ongress of the Soviet Filmmakers Union
(SFU) —- a body representing the 6500 film workers —
they vented their accumulated grievances (“in what
could have been 7 on the Richter scale” one of them
recalls), ousted two-thirds of the previous leadership and
replaced them with ‘new blood’. In an unprecedented
secret ballot they elected controve[...]aubm

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One of[...]ions adopted at the congress was
the formation of a Conflicts Commission, headed by
Pravda critic Andrei Plakhov, appointed to View pre-
viously banned and shelved films and, provided they met
standards of quality, to seek their release. The basic
premise was that everything of artistic value should
become the property of the people. The Commission
swiftly went about their task and within a few weeks pre-
sented a list of 50 films, the first of which soon began to
make their way to the screens.

Meanwhile, practising a little public relations, the SFU
Board invited 50 members of FIPRESCI (an inter-
national film critics’ association) to a resort on the Baltic
coast for a little viewing.

The newly released works quickly attracted attention.
Abuladze’s Repentance, an expose of the Stalinist cult
(see Cinema Papers 6[...]The Soviet press,
encouraged by Gorbachev, warmed to their task of
publicising the ‘thawing’.

Other previously banned works followed — Klimov’s
Agorzia and Farewell, Panfilov’s Theme, Kira Mura-
tova’s Long Goodbyes and Short Farewells, Sokurov’s
Mournful Sympathy, A[...]My Friend Ivan
;-_.,;; vi 4 ‘ I -, Lapshin — and audiences flocked in droves to see them.
. , i 1 They were works of quality, but then forbidden fruit is

‘ always juicier. People were intrigued to discover for
E '. themselves the motives for the[...]r much

more obscure ideological travesties, such as the negative

treatment of progress and technology in Farewell or the

K mention of a Jewish emigre’s creative aspirations in
Theme.

For some of the filmmakers, such as Sokurov and
Gherman, the novelty of release for the first time was
exhilarating. One of Gherman’s earlier works had not
only been banned but Lenfilm Studios was asked to pay
compensation to the state for ‘misspending’ money on
its prod[...]ious
awards at international film festivals, such as Berlin,
_ where Theme won best film and the international critics’
prize. Other Soviet films were being acclaimed at Delhi,

._ Venice, Mannheim and other film events. A tremendous
upsurge of interest in Soviet cinema was taking place.

Tarkovsky once distinguished two types of films:
those that imitate life and those that create their own
world. Many of the banned belonged to the latter. The
censors usually favoured the former. Now, films that
once had no audience enjoy cult status for that very
reason.

Yet the SFU refused to rest on its laurels, claiming that
the quality films were proportionately few in number out
of the 150 (or so) features produced each year in the
Soviet Union. They expressed concern at a decline in
cinema attendances, although these are still extremely
high compared to the West. Any cinema that can sell 4
billion tickets per year (watching 70 per cent Soviet
films), and draw 50 million to one of its blockbusters, is >

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CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 13

The SFU stronghold was determined to proceed still
further. It was claimed that more fundamental changes
were needed so that real democratisation of the industry
could occur. “We want to work on a chain of responsi-
bility but it should exist at all levels. Instant restructuring
is hardly possible but it must begin to gather
momentum,” urged Klimov.

As much of the criticism revolved around Goskino,
Go[...]rom the cinema section of
the Central Committee), a man more likely to strike a
rapport with the West. Alex Rudnev was appointed head
of Sovexport film, and in no time the promotional
materials began to reveal a slicker image. Editors of
major film magazines —— Film Art and Soviet Screen —
were replaced by more dynamic c[...]ntire foundation of the
industry needed rehauling and replacement by a new
model. At the press conference at the January[...]ted “the situation will
hardly change radically as long as we do not radically
change the methods of making movies”. The change
proposed was a complete transformation from a central-
ised, state-subsidised model to what virtually was a
system of free enterprise.

The aim was to do away with the bureaucratic
pyramid and through decentralisation to allow studios
greater autonomy, artistically, administratively and
financially. For an art form that had so long been con-
trolled by state mechanisms it was an unprecedented
departure, but one that would “lead to greater democra-
tisation, freedom and responsibility for the results”
claimed Klimov.

The role of Goskino was to be considerably changed
— no longer censor and script editor but overall co-
ordinator in charge of distribution. Creative units within
the 39 studios in the USSR would be responsible for their
own decision-making. Goskino would merely require the
subject (to avoid duplication) and a two- to three-year
plan so it could work on distribution destiny. If they
decided a film was an unprofitable proposition, the
studio could take up the matter with a special commis-
sion at the SFU.

Each studio was encouraged to form its own model.
Mosfilm, the largest and oldest, employing 5000 workers
and responsible for one-third of the country’s features,
led the way in implementing their structure. Dividing
their staff into creative units Mosfilm democratically
elected leaders (directors and one screen writer) who
were then asked to select their creative team from the
pool of available filmworkers, yet also encouraged to
bring in talented outsiders to work on a contract basis. A
creative council made up of the leaders and the editor-in-
chief would act as the decision-making body for the
studio, though ideas would be discussed within each unit
and passed on to the creative council, now made up of
artistic personnel only — no bureaucrats. This was
indeed a radical departure from the past.

The greatest change was to involve the financing of
films. Studios would no longer depend on state subsidy
but would be encouraged to practise a system of free
enterprise, in which profits from the box office would be
channe[...]productions. Studios would enter
the marketplace to earn their money and the box office
become the main gauge of success. Under the new system
they would have to become much more attuned to public
taste and promotion.

This framework would particularly suit the bigger
studios, such as Mosfilm, which in the past were obliged

14 —— MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

Come And See

to donate 50 per cent of the profits to state organisations
such as day care centres or clinics, while they retained the
other half to cover the cost of filmmaking. Since that
was rarely an adequate amount, they were forced to
apply for more money from the state, thus perpetu[...]e much more daunting.

Further reforms were still to come. In this more com-
petitive system employment by tenure would be replaced
by hiring on a picture-by-picture basis. In a country
where job security has been accepted as one of the basic
tenets of socialism, this was a radical departure intended
to raise artistic standards. Less talented workers whom
the studio was previously obliged to employ would be
relocated to other work, eg teaching film. A Review
Commission would reassess the situation ev[...]e Moscow Film Festival (held every two years)
was to provide a platform to highlight progress and act
as a barometer of glasnosz‘. A record number of dele-
gates and press were attracted to the event, wanting to
discover for themselves the extent of the changes.

Though some of these were only cosmetic, such as the
reduction of the number of prizes and film entries to
ensure quality, others presented marked departure[...]The Tarkovsky retrospective indicated the extent to
which attitudes had relaxed. The filmmaker whose
works were once withdrawn from circulation and whose
name was even deleted from film history books, was
honoured with a retrospective of all his works in their
unabridged versions. For the first time the festival
organisers had selected a foreign head of the jury,
Robert De Niro. A record number of Americans
attended the event, and international distributors
expressed considerable interest in Soviet films.

Appropriately, the spiritual nerve[...]ival
became Dom Kino, the headquarters of the SFU in
Moscow, where a professional club (PROC) provided
opportunities for foreign and Soviet filmmakers to
exchange ideas and discuss issues of vital importance:
the role of film in prevention of nuclear war, the future
of t[...]

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There was even an instant release of a previously
banned film, The Commissar, when its d[...]mmended for release by the Conflicts Commis-
sion but had remained on the shelf — the festival forum
provided a perfect opportunity to challenge the situa-
tion. At the following press[...]irector who was prevented from making films again
and declared professionally unfit by the Supreme Cour[...]tions provided particularly interesting insights and
concrete evidence of glasnost.

Unsurprisingly, Soviet films enjoyed an unpre-
cedented popularity at the film market with record sales
of 414 films to 31 countries. Professional marketing
indicated that the Soviets were eager to capitalise on the
surge of interest for their products, though still display-
ing financial caution in purchasing expensive foreign
films. (The vice-president of Sovexport, Viktor Khukar-
sky, explained that hidden costs of dubbing, transport,
combined with[...]f cinema tickets, make
highly priced blockbusters an infeasible prospect.)

Sovin, the agency branch of Goskino in charge of
handling co-productions and provision of services for
visiting foreign crews, reported record interest in
working with the Soviets and USSR as a location and
subject for documentaries.

The importance of art in political diplomacy was
revealed with the unveiling of the American-Soviet Film
Initiative, a non-profit organisation formed between the
filmmakers of the two superpowers to encourage co-pro-
ductions, professional exchanges, research and better
information services. First proposed at an earlier summit
when a Soviet delegation visited the US in March last
year, the initiative reported a number of projects already
underway: a television documentary, Superpower
Mirror, aimed at dispelling stereotypes between the two
countries, a feature about Chernobyl to be produced by
Stanley Kramer, and a biography of the poet Alexander
Pushkin. It appears that art was making more substan-
tial headway in diplomacy than political summits.

But despite the progress, there are still areas where
reforms have met with less success — particularly in film
education and at VGIK, the All Union Higher Institute
of Cinematography. VGIK is the first film school in the
world, established by Lenin’s decree in 1919, where some
of the Soviet Union’s leading filmmakers had taught
their specialties. Though courses in the various com-
ponents — direction, acting, art, screenwriting and film
criticism, and camera — are long and intensive, for some
years there has been an undercurrent of dissatisfaction
with the standard[...]some of
which has remained unchanged since 1962), and the
quality of the teaching. (Ironically, in the 1930s Eisen-
stein complained about the intellectual and cultural
calibre of the students.)

Gorbachev’s policies gave the students impetus to act.
They organised a conference demanding changes,
suggesting that a system of inviting guest teachers,
approved by student vote, be adopted. The SFU, deter-
mined that a reform of the system had to start at grass
roots, took the students’ compla[...]ere graduates of its system) accused
of producing an assembly line which discouraged talent

and, at best, resulted in mediocrity.
In a subsequent reshuffle of appointments, Goskino’s[...]ate was considered conserva-
tive. Novikov admits that new staff and equipment are
badly needed and that plans to revamp the curriculum
are under consideration, but few believe he is capable of
injecting the institute with the kind of vision and
initiative required.

If proposals to introduce a film syllabus (in cinema
history and cinematography) into secondary schools —
currently prepared by film critics and educators — are
implemented, the student intake of future years may be
even more demanding and knowledgeable, especially as
many Soviet children are already provided with oppor-
tunities to work with film (even 35mm) at amateur clubs
and Young Pioneer hobby courses.

Looking down the line there is still much to be done.
Encouraged by the achievements over the last 18 months
the SFU is proposing a number of further improve-
ments. It is particularly concerned that the reforms be
codified by law so that regression to the previous situa-
tion is unlikely.

Certainly the release of shelved films has injected new
vigour into a previously ailing industry. Victor Dyomin
(head of Soviet film critics) stressed that, though rela-
tively small in number, these films counterbalanced the
situation at a time when mediocrity was representative of
the majority. The shelved filmmaker at least had the
courage to prove that it was still possible to make great
films and it’s only now that the Soviet film industry is
being recompensed for that.

But when the novelty wears off, it will be interesting to
see the quality of new films created as products of the
reconstruction. Judging by those recently released, a
number reflect more personal themes and social
problems, such as Lonely Woman Looking For Com-
panion or Messenger Boy, one of many films concerned
with the dilemmas and disorientation of youth in a
changing society. Will these be able to compete on the
international film scene?

A number of other questions still need to be asked.
How will the free enterprise system of the studios walk
the tightrope with a centralised socialist ideology? It
must be remembered that a democratisation of the arts
does not mean a deviation from socialist ideals. Can the
momentum of the reforms be sustained? Even now
acceptance of the reforms has not been pervasive in
Soviet society and though resistance at this stage is not
overt, in time the opposition may intensify.

When will the changes be truly reflected on the screen
and how will young filmmakers graduating from film
institutions cope with the adjustment? The talent
abounds and new mechanisms have been set up but how
will these interact? Could it even turn out that repression
was conducive to creativity . . .?

Soviet theoreticians were amongst the first to treat
film as an art form. Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin and
Dovshenko set very high standards for their successors,
at the same time setting up the tug-of-war between artist
and state which continued for more than 70 years.
Cer[...]ave produced some masterpieces
since then — one only needs to think of The Cranes Are
Flying or Moscow Doesn’t Believe In Tears — but
generally, horizons for filmmakers have been limi[...]Over the last two years Soviet cinema
has earned a much higher profile internationally; at a
time when Western film has offered limited inspiration,
the lifting of the curtain has released an intense wave of
energy after so many years of stagnation. Commercially
and artistically, it’s provided a sample offering to arouse
world interest. Whether this can be sustained remains to
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CONFESSIONS

OF A
1\/IASK

LET’S think of the human face as a mask.
Not in the sense, primarily, of a disguise that
can be taken on and off; although there are of
course many wholly contrived ‘painted faces’.
I mean, rather, the face as a special,
heightened, almost imaginary sign or
met[...]uminous face — the face
of glamour. Edgar Morin in his pathbreaking
book The Stars (1959) once grumbled over the
historical tendency that has led us to invest so
much in the faces of others — ‘the eyes are
the windows of the soul’ and all that — a
tendency given absolute aesthetic form in our
rapture before the screen close-up of a movie
star. Morin’s worry is valid: something of the
full, earthy body — and that body in motion
— is surely lost in these ethereally frozen
twilight moments of the s[...]tiful
human face, images wrought from movies into
that even more impossibly perfect art of the

Hollywoo[...]o
Duca (L ’er0tisme au Cinema), Ado Kyrou
(Love And Eroticism In The Cinema), Gerard
Legrand (Cinemania) — take a different line
of reverie in relation to images of screen
glamour. Touched one and all by successive
waves of surrealism, these authors contributed
prolifically over many years to that
overshadowed rival of Cahiers du Cinema, the

wonderful magazine Positif. Inspired by a
great visionary and erotic philosopher of the
human face, Malcolm de Chazal, such writers
probed deeply and fancifully into glamour,
grasping the vision as a fantasy of love which
must endlessly be produced through words and
emotions, dreamed out aloud.

A veritable religion of the face emerged, far
surpassing even the traditional gush of
glamour publicity that troubled Morin: a
soliloquy addressed in minute detail to watery
eyes, open pores, follicles of hair, cheek[...]s (Je t’aime, je z"aime), Luis Bunuel
(L ’Age a”0r) and Chris Marker (Sans Soleil)
paid their homages to this vision. And even as
they knew that what they worshipped was a
madly unreal and magnified glamour possible
only via camera lens and cinema screen, these
dreamers still had the surrealist good sense to
know that such beauty could be found outside
the movies — that it could and indeed had to
be explosively ignited within the ordinariness
of everyday life. Here as never before cinema
came to be the source not of escape but of
inspiration, a potent metaphor of glamour in
the service of the world’s amour fou.

Of course, the fact can’t be escaped that
most of the talkers in this love game were
men, with women (privileged c[...]Charisse, Brigitte
Bardot, Marilyn Monroe) fixed as the epitome >

of glamour—as—object. And it is for this very
reason that the game goes largely unplayed
today, at least in these terms; history has
ultimately embarrassed or accused those men
who would forever eulogise women in an
‘enlightened’ film analysis context. Today, the
fact that Positzf published a ‘Dictionary of
Eroticism’ during the May 1968 riots is taken
retrospectively as a cardinal symptom of
political incoherence; today,[...]nat who once dreamed so eloquently of
Greta Garbo is hauled over the coals for
trying the same with Gr[...]n
Gerard Legrand despairs of being no longer
able to bear witness to the heterosexual
eroticism which led him in the first place to
his life of ‘cinemania’. When the American
magazine Film Comment tried in 1985 to
celebrate its ‘favourite screen women’, the
results were indeed largely misogynistic and
prurient. A sad end to the ethos of glamour.
If glamour talk still persists, it is in fact
mostly under the ‘progressive’ (ie historically
sanctioned) cover of man—as—object reverie.
Anyone, man or woman, can swoon in print
these days over Gérard Depardieu, Mel
Gibson, Clint Eastwood or Richard Gere as
figures of glamour. Nelly Kaplan (also a
surrealist) led the way (for straight women at
least) in 1964 with her marvellous cry: “ls
there anything so exciting as a beautiful
woman knowingly caressed by the caprice of
the lens? Yes, the sight of a beautiful young
man captured by a heterosexual camera”. The
reversal of terms and the novelty of choice is
itself exciting, playful. Furthermore, a strongly
homoerotic, sometimes subtly ‘crypto-g[...]ent informs much of the older
writing on glamour, not to mention much of
the work of the great Hollywood p[...]e Benayoun on Keaton (“his
masculine energy”) and the ‘feminine’ Gary
Cooper; or the great stil[...]at every step the desperate tremors
of love with a melancholic longing for death
— and all in the name of a glamorous
‘transcendence’. Besides these various shades
of homoeroticism, perhaps the ‘art house’ is
the last fleetingly safe place where a straight
man can, with care, confess publicly his
‘voluptuous’ estimation of, say, Isabelle
Huppert; but woe to that same man if he
speaks out of turn about Kim Basin[...]tion:
Raffaele Caputo’s “Bleach of Promise” in
Cinema Papers 67.)
Beyond the historical limits of what can and

can’t be said in the name of glamour at any

given time, other deeper and more perennial
problems stir — and they are hardly resolved
by the modish replacement of Marilyn Monroe
by Marcello Mastroianni as resident cultural
sex object. Glamour images both moving and
still have always displayed the tendency to
slide from the positive end of a spectrum to an
opposite, negative end: but that’s not
something you can always see, since it has as
much to do with the use or reception of those
images as with their inherent visual or
associative properties. My sense of what is
positive and negative in glamour photography
is personal — hence not universal — but it is
based on an intuition of an intense, almost
mystical or metaphysical, deep structure in
much writing on the subject: a fierce dualism
of living and dead, moving and frozen, subject
and object, personality and fetish.

Let me explain. Think once more of the
face as a mask, and of glamour as the
idealisation of the face, the imbuing of a face
with soul. Nightmare: the mask becomes a
prison, it hardens and cracks, but can never be
removed — that’s beauty’s curse. Here, the
‘ideal’ of glamour is imposed on the star from
without, a social stereotype administered by
somewhat sinister Pygmalion-like directors,
photographers, lighting and make-up artists.
Billy Wi1der’s cinema, from Sunset Boulevard
to Fedora, has provided the classically jaded
and incisive portrait of a film world where
glamour is all ‘image’, illusion and nothing
more — the dream of eternal youth and poise
giving way to a nightmare of age, decay and
insecurity as lived by the hapless victims of the
glamour system, its so-called ‘stars’. But even
on those who, in real life, don’t rise as high or
fall as hard as Norma Desmond, the code of
glamour must surely wreak its havoc: living an
eternally alienated relation to one’s ‘self’
(presence, appearance, persona[...]h the omnipresent cliche of one’s
‘looks’. (How strange, as Raymond Bellour
once noted, that the question ‘how do I look?’
refers, nervously and eternally, not to one’s
own act of looking but to the acts of others
seeing and evaluating an already prescribed
appearance.) ,

‘Soul’ doubtless resides somewhere else. But
where? Glamour’s fragile utopian dream is the
two-way exchange between a star’s ‘inside’
(personality, heart) and his or her outward
bodily appearance — a dream that the soul
might ‘fashion’ the face and body in its secret,
inner image. The moment a face becomes all
‘surface’, a mask that is too obviously
constructed, the spark of magic which is
glamour immediately flickers out. In all those
glamorous images which really touch us, we

Like Roland Barthes who, in his book on
photography Camera Lucida, privileged what
he called the punctum (the strange,
intractable, individual effect) over the studium
(everything which is cliché or conventional),
Appel seeks out in his chosen images what is
whimsical, imperfect, parodic — and also
again homoerotic, since he (like others)
regards a subterranean gay sensibility as
having totally mocked the Hollywood facade
of heterosexual glamour from within. He is
fond of ‘limpid’, obscure, nutty, failing
images (like a Philippe Halsman snap of
Myth Marilyn against a very ordinary door)
— those that betray tel1—tale signs of life, and
which, in retrospect, indicate the coming
historical moment when the ‘great days of
glamour’ would end, and other more ‘banal’
photographic practices (li[...]apshot or the journalistic news photo) would
come to be revered as, in their own ways,
magical. For ‘everyday life’ is that arena in
which people and things happily move, change
and perish — and photography should not
want to freeze them for evermore.

But is glamour really dead? For a stern
aficionado like Kobal, it died way back in the

1930s: “something that had been intensely
powerful became something that was too
bright, too cheery, and ultimately empty”
(The Art Of The Great Hollywood Portrait
Photographers). A gradual loss both of total
aesthetic mastery (of artist over model) and a
proper tone of solemnity meant the end of the
spell of glamour, in his account. But perhaps
what Kobal values is precisely that tendency to
‘make over’ living, moving, individual subjects
into comatose objects, pure fetishes. And
perhaps the ‘soul’ he sees, the magic he

projects, is the least truly soulful or magical.
Let’s retur[...]historical allowances for heterosexist bias — to
that heady team of Kyrou, Benayoun,
Legrand, and their friends on Positif. It seems
to me these guys really knew something about
soul. Their position was not some
sophisticated pro-life/anti-glamour argument[...]n the contrary, they embraced
the codes, clichés and rituals of the glamour
ethos. Through investing that ethos with more
love and intensity than it ever strictly required,
they turned the ‘fan’s’ position right around
from passivity to total delirium. Not for them
the purism of Kobal: everyone, from Theda
Bara to Jerry Lewis, could be found truly,
stunningly beautiful. Yet these fans always
exercised a certain affectionate discipline, a
vigilance of the seeing heart: their reveries
didn’t totally project a fantasy onto a loved
object, rather they tried to draw out and
magnify every physical and behavioural
particularity of the ever elusive, ever
mysterious subject of their mad desire. Both
tortured and humble, they watched the screen
or pored over stills in total awe — and in the
explosive point of contact between what the
star actually projected and what the fan
longingly invested, a soul was born.

The Positif crew knew something that too
many of us forget too quickly: that the cinema
is bigger than we are, that we are taken up in
it, moved and transformed by it just as we
move and transform it. Glamour, at its highest
point, can[...]y scenario of
two-way exchange. At the cinema, we are
privileged to receive the confessions of masks,
those souls made flesh which ultimately
disappear back into shadow; and we might see
in the screen-mirror that we too are masks,
souls, shadows, free to reinvent ourselves. At
the end of such an initiation, we might also
realise (as did the surrealists) that the cinema
of glamour is thus the perfect metaphor for
what is possibly the only thing greater than it:
love — sweet, mad love, another terrain where
masks confess to and transform each other
ceaselessly.

CINEMA[...]

That you should care for me!

George and Ira Gershwin’s

‘S’Wonderful’ sung by Audrey

Hepburn to Fred Astaire in

Funny Face (1957)

I hate showbusiness and I love it. I love
working with actors and dancers and writers
and designers. I think they're the most
beautiful, talented and witty people in the
world. But I hate the bullshit, the Beverly
Hills homes with[...]I hate
Mercedes, I hate Gucci bags, I hate all of
that shit.

Bob Fosse interviewed by Bernard

Drew in “Life As A Long

Rehearsal” for American Film,
November 1979.

THE OXFORD English Dictionary tells us
that glamour is “A magical or fictitious
beauty attaching to any person or object; a
delusive or alluring charm.” Introduced into
th[...]arly 18th century, the
word was originally coined to conjure, in the
act of enchantment, those qualities pertaining
to spells, trickery, deceit.

However, with the introduction and
development of photography (particularly
fashion photography) and the cinema, it
would appear that the meaning of glamour has
been modified and extended to evoke not the
catalysing process but rather one of the
ultimate effects of what cameras can produce
in the frozen or moving image.

Through the tricks and ruses of technology
and the ways light and shade may be
artificially adjusted and re-adjusted, the
magical instant became a perpetual moment,
manifestly there for all time, for all to behold.

22 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

Fictitious beauty was presented in magazines
and moviehouses as beguiling fact. Cheating
delusion was transformed into forever
charming illusion. And the all-embracing term
to signify a certain heightened, highlighted
attractiveness, peculiar to manipulative
photogenics, was Glamour. Glamour -— no
longer a special effect but the everlasting,
splendid result, the shining net outcome of
many special effects.

Glamour and, more specifically, Hollywood
Glamour, was, and enduringly still is, Gloria
Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo,[...]rd, Charles Boyer,
Constance Bennett, George Raft and a galaxy
of other male and female bodies, whose faces
and figures ‘took’ in a uniquely felicitous
manner to the Dream Factory’s klieg lights.

The fortuitous response of any being to the
play of bulb shine and filter shadow across his
or her bodily contours not only determines the
shape and form of that entity’s glamour
potential but also further emphasises a
scientific/poetic relationship between glamour
and various properties of light. Attributes
often associated with the special impact of
glamour are lustre, dazzle, sparkle, glitter,
glow. And it is precisely through the
phenomenon of the camera’s technical and
chemical reactions that some Hollywood stars
shine with glamour and others don’t.

Glamour should not be confused with
energy, talent, style, charisma, sex appeal or
even beauty, though in many screen
performers glamour co-exists with all[...]nor precludes greatness or popularity. It
simply is and you’ve either got or you haven’t
got glamour.[...]elody Of 1940

If stars can look or be glamorous (as made
evident by movie stills, photo pin—ups, vi[...]erpretative freeze
frames of memory), then surely a number of
them can behave and move glamorously as
well. The Katharine Hepburn canter, the Cary
Gran[...]r slink provide distinguishing kinetic
signatures that complement the distilled
glamour of posed portraits. Furthermore, if
glamour on screen is characterised as a kind of
glimmering surface veneer or textual poli[...]dependence on lighting
variables can be inflected to help create
different types, diverging schools of glamour
that could range from Bright and Debonair
through to Dark and Dramatic.

Probably the most gesturally pitched,
energetically stylised, ritually concentrated and
expressively exuberant of film genres is the

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 23

as Glamour In Motion.

The deaths last year of actor-dancer Fred
Astaire (born 1899) and actor-dancer-
choreographer-director Bob Fosse (b[...]wo singular
innovators of the movie musical, each a
visionary practitioner who shaped, sharpened
and shifted the elements of song and dance to
yield forth much more than just a distinctive
style or attitude.

Fred’s flair and Bob’s brilliance fashioned
unique universes, individual realms of colour,
line, mood and movement which we could
separately label Astaire Glamour and Fosse
Glamour. Both artists perform as neatly
apposite mascots for an Astaire-Bright/Fosse-
Dark Glamour dichotomy yet Astaire is not
without his melancholy nor is Fosse entirely
bereft of optimism or transcendence.

Nobody proves the you-don’t-have—to-be-
beautiful-to—be-glamorous maxim quite so
cogently as Fred Astaire. Not until Barbra
Streisand is there a plainer-faced contender
who triumphs as the leading film musical
performer of a generation.

Though a seasoned success on Broadway
and in the West End (partnered by his sister
Adele), Fred auditioned solo for Hollywood in
1933, exhibiting that deceptive nondescriptness
that is said to have prompted one myopic
movie mogul to note: “Can’t act. Can’t sing.
Balding. Can dance a little.”‘ Producer
David O. Selznick’s astute reply to this initial
snub reads: “I am a little uncertain about the
man but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears
and bad chin line that his charm is so
tremendous that it comes through even in this
wretched test.”2

And come through it did, gloriously and
glamorously. Fred went on to star in a series
of nine black and white RKO dance musicals
with Ginger Rogers which Pauline Kael
describes as “the most exquisite courtship rites
the screen has ever known”.3 These are films
distinguished by what David Thomson
succinctly terms as “those intimate, but
accelerating conversational dances, where hard
heels and glossy floors speak of bliss”.4

The sleek Astaire-Rogers vehicles of the
1930s with their justly celebrated Van Nest
Polglase Big White Sets constitute a peerless
pinnacle of Hollywood glamour. The films
positively fluoresce with that all important
light, sculpting Art Deco-rated fan[...]floors, satin dresses, celluloid costume flowers
and Astaire’s hairstyle”.5

Fred’s immaculate grooming and sartorial
sense enhance his rake-like frame which etches
out such a parody of male slenderness as to
seem almost inhumanly neuter. But that big
irresistible grin twinkles with boyishness and
the pliant silver tenor voice tosses off lyrics by
Gershwin, Berlin and Porter with an
occasional catch of ardour and dash of deep
yearning. And when Astaire guides a female
partner in dance, it’s clear this is a man who
enjoys and salutes the principles and
conventions of heterosexual romance where
He Loves and She Loves, Fated to be Mated,
Cheek to Check, Night and Day.

The ‘Night and Day’ number is featured in
the very first Fred Astaire movie I remember
ever seeing, The Gay Divorcee (1934) and my
10-year-old eyes were, even then, astonished
by the haunting, heart-breaking glamour of it
all.

Ginger in frothy snow evening gown
backing off from, and eventually succumbing
to, a persistently advancing Fred in white tie
and tails, set to the rhythmic, relentless throb
of Cole Porter’s[...]tact. Contact. Wow. One of those
moments when you know that you love movies
if this is what movies can do.

Another equally arresting kind of[...]mponents of the Hollywood
musical left me gasping in mid-adolescence
when those busty dance-hall floozies hung
over the rails and clicked their fingers in the
‘Hey Big Spender’ routine from Bob[...]

Yet this dank demi—monde of tack’n’tinsel
exudes its own stifling enchantment and
appeal. The sharply exaggerated stances, the
acce[...]ther than rounded
movement, the roving camerawork and
bravura use of constant, cutting—in editing
contribute towards a crackling ensemble effect
that reactivates strident cheap into stylish chic.

As with the two other musicals
choreographed and directed by Fosse, Cabaret
(1972) and All That Jazz (1979), this reverse
side to the fine romancing and ritzy put-on of
Astaire, this key-hole view of seedy, steamy,
carnal reality, this dancing in—the Fosse dark,
nevertheless possesses a showy metallic glint, a
piercing diamond—hard flash. In short,
glamour. In deconstructing the luminous grace
of Fred’s glamour, Fosse reconstructs his own
brand of glamour aptly conveyed by the
promotional slogan for Cabaret as “a divinely
decadent experience”.

We can see early gleams of Fosse-Dark
Glamour in some of those 1950s MGM
musicals which showcase Fosse’s work both as
a regular-looking, keen—faced young dancer
and as a resourceful, idiosyncratic, promising
choreographer.

In the ‘From This Moment On’ number
from Kiss Me Kate (1953), after the first two
couples have done their bright bits, Fosse gives
himself and Broadway colleague Carol Haney
an absolutely sizzling duet, introduced by a
skidding scream and further punctuated by
curled up knee bends, unexpected body slides
and a sort of dazed, head—holding stagger.
Conceptually and stylistically it’s a far jazzy
cry from Ann Miller’s sunny exhibition tap,
Howard Keel’s robust leer and Kathryn
Grayson’s operatic trill in the same film.

Similarly the hearty trade union shenanigans
of John Raitt and Doris Day in The Pyjama
Game (1957) are counterpointed by Fosse’s
dance direction of the sweaty, underground
tango in ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ (ole) and the
prototypical Fossean ‘amoeba’ grouping of
compressed human pistons in ‘Steam Heat’.
And bursting forth from the Faustian baseball
farce of Damn Yankees (1958) is Gwen
Verdon’s knockout instance of screen
immor[...]ITY: Paula Kelly, Shirley MacLaine, Chlta Rivera

But the most honoured (eight Oscars
including best direction) and best remembered
Fosse film is possibly Cabaret. This musical
revamping of Chris[...]Berlin
stories by way of John Van Druten’s I Am A
Camera boldly reflects the social currents of
Weimar Germany within the tatty milieu of
the Kit Kat Klub, a Berlin nightspot where can
can girls turn into strutting Nazi soldiers and a
giant female gorilla acts as a metaphor for
persecuted Jewry,

Among Cabaret’s superb routines, Joel
Grey’s devil doll M.C. and Liza Minnelli’s
“international zinging zenzation” Sally Bowles
singing and dancing ‘The Money Song’ are a
cynical high point. The number also furnishes
a revealing indicator of aspects of Astaire and
Fosse Glamour when placed alongside
Fred and Judy Garland’s renowned team
effort ‘A Couple of Swells’ from Easter .1. _
Parade (1948).

Both numbers are novelty songs about
wealth and the relative conditions of having
and having not.

In the Irving Berlin standard, Judy and Fred
play at being a pair of New York city bums
who elaborate upon the[...]joys of
slumming (“We could sail up the avenue/ But
we haven’t got a yacht/We could ride up the
avenue/But the horse we had was shot.”) For
the Ebb and Kander composition, specially
devised for Cabaret the film, Liza and Joel
play at being a couple of over-dressed toffs
who perform a paean to how it’s cold
cash and nothing else, certainly not
love (“But when hunger comes
a-rap—tat-a-tat, tat-a-tat at the window/
See how love flies out the door!”)that
makes the world go round.

Fosse uses Minnelli’s top heavy
eagerness to please and Grey’s
mischievous midgety prurience to fuel the
song’s message that coins cure all, to the
extent that “a mark, a yen, a buck or a
pound” offer some kind of sex
surrogate; her bosom and his crotch become[...]

spangled vamp and monocled dwarf shower
themselves in riches, turning each other on to
the lust for lucre.

Of course the lyrics do tender some
momentary sub-Brechtian moral compensation
(“That clinking, clanking, clunking sound/ls
all that makes the world go round”). However
a lot of our recollective residue from the song
remains anchored in shots of the shaking
Minnelli mammaries and the jiggling Grey
groin.

This doesn’t necessarily mean we get out
our ideological whips and relegate Fosse to
some theoretical concentration camp for
Suspected[...]ers or Convicted
Body Imagists. It simply appears that this is
how Fosse’s immense choreographic and
directorial skills have chosen to employ the
particular talents of particular individuals to
interpret a particular song. Or that is to say
parts (including body parts) of Minnelli and
Grey serve an overall theme in ‘The Money
Song’. Their considerable energies are
moulded and managed by Fosse to make
performative means reach an informative end.

EASTEE PARADE: Astaire and Judy Garland

26 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

It’s the showing as much as the show that for
Fosse must go on . . .

What choreographer Robert Alton, Fred
Astaire and Judy Garland achieve in the
‘Swells’ routine comes across as significantly
different. To begin with, the whole affair is
filmed using what had become recognised as
Astaire’s trademark, namely the performing
figures in top-to—toe medium long shot
producing a unity, which is further reinforced
by the impression (and often the actual
occurrence) of seamless flow, of being staged
in one continuous take.

There’s a notable absence here of Fosse’s
virtuoso inter— and intra-cutting technique,
where the frame cuts up into an ever-changing
frieze of other shots, either related or
unrelated to the main dance action, allowing
for the effects of fragmentation. In its place,
what we see is what we get: Fred and Judy
going through a vaudevillian turn against a
conventional painted backcloth.

Most of any virtuosity involved is up to
them to perform for us without lightning edits
or multipl[...]gles. Aside from the
song's quite arbitrary theme that you can be
happy being poor by pretending you’re not,
the number’s uninterrupted show-it—like-it-g[...]le
pleasure of witnessing two great stars sock it
to us.

In torn rags and faded patches they mug
about and camp it up, displaying the full
riches that the glamour of their talent together
affords. This isn’t “bits” of Astaire and
Garland prismatically piecing out a map of a
larger thematic mosaic, grand scheme or Big
Idea.

This is the entire lovely thing that happens
when he prances erect in battered top hat and
dusty polka dot bow tie and she ducks down
and around, grabbing attention with low down
shimmies and hammy, winking toothless
smiles. It’s the real thing and not necessarily
the “reality” thing that Fosse claims he was
trying to inject into the cinemusical genre,
where he has, in his own words, “generally
tried to make the musical more believable”.6

And watch how Fred watches Judy, how
generously he ‘gives’ the scene to her. Not
standing back, mind you, but participating,
responding, using the carriage and bearing of
their bodies within the number to stress,
inflect, change, in fact, edit, the routine. If
Fosse evidently revels in the flinty cross-
cutting glories of montage, then the Astaire
mode utilises self-propelling mise en scene to
express the special glamour of his musical
whirl.

The transition in film history from Astaire
to Fosse glamour can be seen to reflect a
parallel shift in art history which moves from
classical Renaissance perspective (man as the
measure of all things) to dislocating, distorting
expressionism, abstraction and surrealism
(man as un-measurable part of many, many
things). Fred Astaire, as has been often noted,
functions as a kind of twirling, animated
version of Leon[...]

This question of scale and proportion might
suggest how Astaire glamour shifts so
easefully across to dimensions of
unquestionable radiance while Fosse[...]zzle.

Speaking scientifically/poetically, forces are
said to radiate and disperse energies in equal
distribution when the dynamic source is
centrifugal, when rays emit from a crucial
core. In other words, Astaire glamour could
appear to radiate, to be a radiant glamour due
to the phenomenon of an ever-present,
governing principle which sustains ratio and
guides the differentials of frequency and
speed. And that quintessential dynamic
principle must, of course, be Fred Astaire —
his is the music that makes him (and others)
dance. Within this contextual sphere, Fosse
functions as a high-flying piece of flotsam or
jetsam, a mass of startling details that don’t
quite make a whole.

Why else do Fred and Ginger in the
‘Bouncin’ the Blues’ rehearsal tap from The
Barkleys Of Broadway (1949) project a
luminescence and zest that the ‘On Broadway’
audition sequence in Fosse’s All That Jazz can
only meet with the perspiration of anxious
hopefuls straining to match the demands of A
Chorus Line—Up? (Or do they and the segment
just get wasted from the exhausting cleverness
and pressure of Alan Heim’s editing tour-de-
force?)

Why do we remember, can never forget, the
brow-to-brow bonding of ‘The Carioca’ from
Flying Down To Rio (1933) and the crossing
arcs of stretched arms in ‘The Piccolino’ from
Top Hat (1935) when the[...]k of
the Pompeii Club’s ‘Rich Man’s Frug’ in
Sweet Charity (1969) has long since dimmed?

How come the utter simplicity of ‘By
Myself’ in The Band Wagon (1953) seems to
say (and do) so much more (and so much less)
about solitude, ego and mortality than the
whole phantasmagorical Kamikazé fireworks
finale of ‘Bye Bye Life’ in All That Jazz?

In looking at Fosse versus Astaire glamour
are we finding a vital link between glamour
that goes and glamour that grows? Do Fosse
and Astaire respectively affirm and negate the
19th century Romantic novelist Ouida’s
dictum: “I know how quickly the glamour
fades in the test of constant intercourse”?7

KISS ME KA[...]ral radiance, can

fabulous Fred ever really die? And was bright
Bob, even alive, in perpetual peril of out-
dazzling himself, of being Fosse—lised in his
own mesmerising, fetishising modernity?

Perhaps the formidable dance (and former

film) critic Arlene Croce (author of the
acclaimed Fred Astaire And Ginger Rogers
Book) might assist with a few observations to
help clear up at least some of the enigmas

surrounding Astaire, Fosse and Hollywood
Glamour:

1.
2.
3.

4.

7.
8. Arlene Croce, Afterimages, Alfred A. Knopf, New York

9.
10.

On Fosse

[His] method of closing down and hugging the
figure so that the only way it can move is by
isolating and preciously featuring anatomical
parts makes it a good vehicle for narcissistic
display and slithering innuendo}?

On Astaire

Passion — the missing element in just about
every ‘sexy’ duet that has been attempted since
— is usually confused with emoting and going
primitive. With Astaire and Rogers it’s a matter
of total professional dedication; they do not give
us emotions, they give us dances and the more
beautifully they dance, the more powerful the
spell that seems to bind them together.9

When the curtain went up on an Astaire dance

. . . the experience was so dazzling the only sane
response was gratitude to film for having
brought it into existence.1°

Arlene Croce, The Fred Astaire And Ginger Rogers
Book, Vintage Books, New York, 1972[...]Brown,
Boston-Toronto, 1975, p28

David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary-Of The
Cinema, Seeker 8.[...]p20

5. ibid. p524
6.

interview with Glenn Loney in After Dark magazine
quoted by Greg Faller. The international Dictionary Of
Fi/ms And Filmmakers, vol. 2, Macmillan, Chicago,
1984, p196

Ouida, Held in Bondage, 1863, p97

1978, mas
ibid. p436
ibid. p435

For Terry Owen.

(With thanks to Felicity Collins, Anna and Peter
Dzenis, Jill Niquet, Lorraine Mortimer, Bill Routl, Rick
Thompson and Michael Wilkie.)

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 27

THE 1\
IRONI

“The great show is as furtive, and as bound by
loneliness, as every voyeur’s pleasure must be” —
David Thomson

I think there are two kinds of cinephiles (film
buffs), or perhaps[...]within every true, serious buff. On the one
hand, a deep attraction to states of solitude;
and on the other, a celebration of community.
The movies allow, and encourage both
tendencies. I can go home and have sad dreams
about Once Upon A Time In America as if the
film had been made only for me; and I can
also whoop it up with the gore hounds at a
matinee of Evil Dead 11. I have a suspicion
that as critics become more dedicated and
‘professional’ — as they alienate themselves
from the Hoyts theatre complex and end up
dividing their time between secluded preview
rooms, the VCR and their writing desk —
melancholy inexorably sets in, andto me also the most
melancholy. He cultivates his sense of solitude,
and pursues it relentlessly through each film,
motif or star that comes into his view. Whether
writing about teleph[...]Beatty, Wetherby or Mike’s
Murder, Thomson sees in each the signs of a
sad shadow play: lack of fulfilment, loss,
separation, desperation. No matter what
fleeting joy or whimsy flickers across the
screen, for Thomson it is all ghosted by a
recognition of an unavoidable, solitary end.
Although one could fairly object that Thomson
ends up ‘rigging’ most of his subjects in order
to produce such a reading (and what film
criticism doesn’t ultimately do just that?),
there’s no doubt that he is the most eloquent
spokesperson for the melancholi[...]xperience.

Prospective readers of Warren Beatty: A Lzfe
And A Story should be forewarned of that
which Thomson lays on the table in the first
few pages of the book: this is a ‘biography’ by
someone who has never met, spoken to or
corresponded with his subject; Thomson’s
trick, in fact, is to write about Beatty as if he
is already dead. This corresponds to the book’s
ideas about stardom and glamour alike: the
screen actor as ghost, myth, blank screen upon
which the viewer projects his or her own
tortured desire. We cannot ever know the ‘real’
Beatty; he exists only as a fiction of the
imagination. This lengthy e[...]

Thomson of the key tenets of what could justly
be termed his theory of popular film — a
theory of desire and imagination —— will delight
cinephiles in tune with this not-so-hidden
agenda; but it may well disappoint readers in
search of a more conventional, and
conventionally informative, biography.

There are in fact two books in one — the
‘life’ and a ‘story’, a novel which runs in
alternate chapters with the biography.
Thomson offers his story as a reflective
counterpoint to Beatty’s life, “a part fit for
him to play” (p5). It concerns a naive outsider
to the movie world, a writer named D, being
brought into the mysterious, duplicitous
kingdom of a reclusive superstar, Eyes. This
literary gambit (or conceit) does not work as
well as it should for Thomson, and it weighs
the book down mightily. The ‘story’ is
somewhat monotonous and lifeless — coming
to it straight after reading Rudolph Wurlitzer’s
not dissimilar novel about New Hollywood,
Slow Fade, I found myself wondering whether
it is a rule of the genre for the innocent
narrator to have his cock sucked by the
producer/star’s secretary by page 25. In the
context of the parallel parts, this story fails
particularly insofar as, while trying to expand
and delve more deeply into the themes thrown
up by Be[...]le secrecy), it ends up
merely ‘illustrating’ and reiterating them, over
and over.

Another reason the ‘story’ doesn’t work is
that, finally, I don’t think Thomson is too
good at stories. He understands them and their
magic — he even provides his own version of
Fitzgerald’s famous “I’m just making
pictures” lesson from The Last Tycoon — but
his deepest sensibility lies elsewhere. For
Thomson, rattling good yarns are only
important for the moments of reflection they
create, the pauses, the echoes. Movies always
provide a sad revelation for him; he cherishes
the dark, frozen moments of silent watching,
waiting and listening. The cinema —— and
particularly the cinema based on a system of
glamorous stars — is a spectacle of imeriority,
of private thoughts and hovering, luminous
faces (here Thomson meets the[...]centre of ourselves”).
The subject of the book is Beatty (rather than
Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino) because he is an
actor who “prefers to be invaded by the
perplexity of a moment”, who arouses doubt
and speculation whilst performing/being,

rather than one who ‘projects’. Thomson is
fond of the notion of ‘worrying’ — and Beatty
is someone who ‘worries at’ his roles, rendering
them strangely opaque and ghostlike.

It has to be said that, because of Thomson’s
affinity for the ‘pregn[...]ent, the
most successful counterpoint he provides to the
‘life’ is not the ‘story’ but the immaculately
selected, and often tantalisingly mysterious still
photographs — everything from Beatty’s face
at its most inscrutable to haunted highway
vistas. The book comes equally alive when both
the ‘biography’ — and the numerous
reflections on what it is to write biography ——
give way to what Thomson does best and what
few biographers can do at all: the analysis of
films. In a few brief pages, Thomson brings
Lilith, The Parallax View, Mickey One and
McCabe And Mrs Miller alive in ways and
from angles that one has never read or
imagined before. Thomson can grasp in a truly
exciting way the interplay of an actor’s
contribution, the part he or she has been called
upon to play, the persona that has accrued to
the star, and the total semantic field of the film
as a film — where all this holds together and
where it flies apart.

When it comes to the question of glamour in
the cinema, I think there are two traditions.
The first would be signified for me by the
chapter in Robert Benayoun’s book on Buster
Keaton called The Mask Of Glamour, a letter
of love truly without limits. For Benayoun,
Keaton’s face is a mask, a perfect work of
flesh, an imperishable image. Age cannot
wither him, nor custom stale his infinite variety
. . . In Alfred Appel’s Signs Of Life, a rather
darker variation on the theme of the mask
works itself out: the mask as facade, as the
picture of Dorian Gray, the real decay and the
real complexity lying beneath the surface.
Th[...]ainst each other. His
‘story’ gives full vent to the grim ironies, the
fatal contradictions of the condition of
stardom. But his interest in the ‘life’ is the
emotion of someone fully seduced, who sees in
the face of the actor, and the fancy it inspires,
“the ultimate transcendi[...]For
Thomson, transcendence too undoubtedly
leads, in the end, to pure melancholy. But for
me, for you? We are not through yet with the
cultural complexities of desire and imagination.

Adrian Martin
Warren Beatty: A Life And A Story by David

Thomson (Seeker & Warburg/[...]

few y[...]riter Raymond
Carver briefly visited this country
and his fiction, which is admired
by such Australian writers as Helen
Garner and Elizabeth Jolley, has
enjoyed quite a vogue in Australia
since that time. Carver is a
meticulous craftsman who
celebrates succinctly and with
compassion the travails of lower
middle America and not just in any
narrow economic sense. Carver’s
America is an America without
glamour and without prestige, a
world of little people getting by as
best they can. The authority of his
writing comes[...]e invests common life at its
shabbiest. His style is crystalline: it
traces the ups and downs of the
tough life with a delicacy of
understated cadence. I suspect he
appeals to Australians so much
because of his understatement, his
ability to touch on the experience
of the nearly inarticulate and his
complete lack of social pretension.
lt makes sense that someone

should have had the idea of
turning Carver’s story Feathers into
a short Australian movie. The
world of Carver’s fiction has a real
resemblance to that all too rarely
seen suburban world as it was
represented in Stephen Wallace's
Love Letters From Teralba Road
and it's not hard to imagine the
early Stephen Wallace, or perhaps
the[...]rpieces
which translated Carver into the
language Australian cinema needs
so much: an idiom which would
be implicit and rapid, realistic
without the circumstantial dross[...]Unfortunately this doesn't
happen with Feathers as John
Ruane directs it. Carver’s story is
about a man and woman who visit
a couple in the country and end
up changing their lives. The story
represents Carver at his most
laconic and its punch comes from
its last page and the retrospective
light it casts. There's a fat ugly
baby and a pet peacock and a fair
amount of daunting domestic bliss
but everything in the story is
laconically epiphanic, it never
strains towards symbolism. And the

30 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

FEATHERS: Neil Melville as Bert

stylistic consistency ensures that
the surprising conclusion has its
own inevitability.

John Ruane’s Australianised
version both adapts the story to
imagined Australian conditions
(which is fine) and transcribes the
residuum of Carver’s action and
dialogue with a Visconti-like
slavishness - and somehow this
misfires. Part of the trouble is that
Carver’s homogeneous poor white
world (which is devoid of any
sense of class) suffers an odd sea-
change through a needless bout of
Australian self-consciousness and
social unease. in the story the
contrast is between the domestic,
countrified couple with child and
pet and their free-ranging foils. In
the film this somehow gets
entangled with something
suspiciously like the Life Style
issue. The upshot is that Jack
(James Laurie) and Fran (Rebecca
Gillingl look as though they have
escaped from the nearest
advertising agency to visit their
hick friends Bert (Neil Melville) and
Olla (Julie Forsyth) — whereas
much of the point of the action
comes from the fact that the two
couples have occupied two corners
of precisely the same world. The
subtle gap in the story between the
breeders and the childless couple
gets dressed out in the least subtle
kind of social distinction and all

the signals seem wrong. Where the
short story is told in the first person
in a tone of sustained naivete
which wins the reader over to a
point from which two perspectives
blur, the film[...]the
embarrassment of the city-slickers.
Feathers is certainly a film with
its heart in the right place. The
opening scenes with the city
couple, concentrating the visual
interaction between them, are
vigorous and enticing. And the
visual ploy of keeping the couples
in the one frame initially and then
individuating and isolating is
intelligent and might well have
been very satisfying but the script
and the acting bog things down.
Rebecca Gilling as Fran does

have the advantage of looking like
”a big tall drink of water” which is
how Fran is described in the story,
but she plays the part in the muted
Australian plain style that one
associates with the daily soaps —
she insinuates that she's an
attractive, sympathetic woman,
equal to anything and with no
more depth than she needs. Both
James Laurie as Jack and Neil
Melville as Bert lay on the ocker
he-man stuff with fair skill but as
though they had to characterise the
vulgarity of their characters rather
than simply be ordinary blokes.[...]hem could benefit from

watching Jack Thompson on a
good day.) in the part of the wife
in the country, Julie Forsyth seems
to me quite simply wrong. She
plays the role in that Carltonised
rustic whine which she has used
on Melbourne stage audiences as
everything from Lady Macbeth to
Madame Ranevskaya. Oddly
enough it doesn't work in
”realistic" cinema either; even
though she’s playing a country
woman the effect is both wooden
and mannered.

Feathers has the advantage of its
ambition. The countryside around
Ballarat is used to splendid effect in
all its frosty blues and sunlit golds.
A smattering of moments work
with a real freshness and panache
and the all important peacock is
quite a performer. But when it all
comes down to it Feathers is a very
interesting piece of film which does
not quite come alive.

it was shown with Megan
Simpson's An Australian Summer, a
short film with less exalted
pretensions. A piece of
journeywork by a director recently
out of film school, this was little
more than a memoir with images.
It showed, however, almost
inadvertently (because the attempt
to fictionalise was so slender),
some kind of refraction of the low
key Australia that Feathers needed
to come to terms with.

belief that it is still possible to
create a cinema of fresh images
and sounds that connect to the
heart — a cinema of precision and
intensity shedding light on the
human condition. The film I'm
referring to is Keiran Finnane’s
Ocean, Ocean — an Australian-
French 16mm co-production —
whose importance f[...],
increase with the passage of time.
Ocean, Ocean is a highly
accomplished work of ambiguity
and silence that exhibits a rare
filmic sensibility at home with the
main narrative and stylistic
conventions of the European art
film as a distinct mode Of cinematic
discourse.

Ocean, Ocean's authorial
expressivity centres on an
impressive ability to manipulate the
visual language of the art cinema,
so that in effect, we have a work
that approximates Bresson's
definition of his Own sublime
cinema as ‘cinematography’. That
is to say, a cinema which rejects
the banal lies of most of our
mainstream cinema which is,
according to the French filmmaker,

no more than photographed
theatre. Ocean, Ocean is a
splendid instance of his description
of cinematography as ”a writing
with images in movement and with
sounds”.

There may be some who will see
Ocean, Ocean as simply a faithful
reproduction of the key formal and
thematic configurations Of the an
cinema. And there may be others
who may object to its ’ideologically
unsound’ story of a young woman
having a relationship with an
elderly man. Both positions, I

AUSTRALIAN SUMMER: Anne
Tenney and Alan Lovell

contend, are misleading in the light
of the evidence on the screen.

Ocean, Ocean is a brave and
imaginative work whose sombre
colours indicate an emotional
world where its lonely characters
seek understanding in a universe of
indifference. This is not to say that
the film is without humour. On the
contrary, witness the early
sequence staged around a serene
lake where we see the heroine
pursued by an amorous young man
who is limping because his shoes
are too small. I say ”brave”
because the film is genuinely
experimental in concept and
execution. It is a work that dares to
take risks, the biggest risk being the
writer—director’s willingness to
create a work of great refinement
that belongs and contributes to an
unmistakably original cinematic
topography enunciated by Resnais,
Duras and Bresson.

Finnane gives us haunting scenes
of characters and their ambiguous
relationships in a world that is at
the same time alluring and
impenetrably mysterious. She seeks
out new refreshing options in the
relation of image to sound. But
sound in this case, excluding
Felicity Foxx's apposite mournful
music, is silence, a silence which
speaks of our solitude and pain in
a world of fleeting happiness. The
film's characters seem to be
happier ensconced in the warmth
of their dwellings. The world
outside is both beautiful and sad, a
place only fit for passing through,
as we are reminded in one of the
work's pivotal scenes, where the
heroi[...]his
office.

Ocean, Ocean possesses several
fine and understated performances.
Helen Manning is engagingly
credible as the pensive heroine;
Pierre Vial as her aged companion
is equally sensitive in his role and
his finely sculptured face is, on
several occasions, embraced by a
slow moving camera. This is a
tender work of faces, gestures and
doubt. Bernard Ballet as the
heroine’s other companion is
particularly memorable. His
expressive face reflects a quiet
wisdom of someone at peace with
the world.

Ocean, Ocean is a mature work
of abundant conceptual and
technical accomplishment. It
knows what it wants to say and
how best to say it. it is a film of
beauty and sadness, of stillness and
compassion. Australian cinema is
richer for it.

i .

THE MELBOURNE FILM FESTIVAL[...]AL
*C>t PROGRAMMES FROM 1953-1987.

MANY OF THESE ARE NOW COLLECTORS’ ITEMS.

PRICES RANGE FROM $5.00-$10.00 DEPENDING ON YEAR,
PLUS POSTAGE AND PACKAGING.
ORDER FORMS ARE AVAILABLE FROM:

MELBOURNE FILM FESTIVAL
PO BOX 2760EE 41 A’BECKETT ST
MELBOURNE 3001 MELBOURNE 3000

OR RING (03) 663 2954 DURING BUSINESS HOURS FOR
DETAILS ON HOW TO ORDER.

2ND FLOOR

V7? V

TO ADVERTISE IN

CINEMA

//57//3.2/‘I/J

VVV

Ring
Patricia Amad: Melbourne 429 5511

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The Sydney Film Video Event will take
place dt the Chduvel Cinemu over 6 '
ngyhts duriry April/Mdy 88. The Sydney

Super 8 Film Group is interested in
viewing contributions in the fidlowing
guiges: Super 8, 16mm, 35mm, VHS,[...]al will he considered.
Deadline for contributions is April 1/88.

The Sydney Super 8 Film Group
PO Box 424 Kings Cross 2011
(02) 332 4674

Assisted by The Australian Film Commission

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 31

In fact genesis of the concept occurred
in the two countries at very much the
same time. in the case of Channel 4 it was
the Annan Committee on the Future of
Broadcasting between 1974 and 1977
which laid out the general philosophy and
structure of the Fourth Channel largely on
the basis suggested to the Committee by
broadcaster and writer Anthony Smith.

Smith argued that the new channel

should be

. . placed outside th[...]trategy, outside the BBC/IBA duopoly . . .
wedded to a different doctrine from existing
broadcasting authorities, to a doctrine of
openness rather than to balance, to expres-
sion rather than to neutralisation.

Considerable argument and com-
promise nevertheless had to be worked
through in the five years between
Annan’s report and the start of transmis-

sion by Channel 4 late in 1982.

32 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

What can fiustralia

learn flsom Britaints

channel 4[...]-_g_u;e;s Ea

THE SIGN OF

I don't think I need to detail Channel 4’s
subsequent performance other than to
point out that in the last British financial
year to March 1987, Channel 4 not only
met its audience targets with a range of
programs and films which have received
international critical acclaim, but also
billed close to £160 million worth of adver-
tising and returned a profit of around £20
million to the mainstream commercial
operators who fund it.

Almost everyone had, of course,
declared in 1982 that the concept couldn’t"
and wouIdn’t work. So well is it work‘
now that the discussion turns on cuttln it’
loose or even privatising it.

In the same year in which Angnan
returned his findings (1977), the Austra-
lian Labor Party adopted, as part of its
policy on arts and communication, a plan,
to establish what one of its creators;
Phillip Adams, had dubbed “The Electric
Gallery". This was to be a television
service which concerned itself with pro-
grams which were educational "and
fostered a national cultural identity. It
would support the Australian film and

television iFI?ililSll¥§§ anfél. lilie @tE1annel
would act in tlilie martltet enly as a pub‘-
lisher of progizams — tElat is. it would
make none of its awn.

Labor, howeazen was net than in effioe;
and the concegt was QSABIEEQKGEI t '
Fraser Governnne« -tiieslsitatn‘ to
the scope of nwltllingiulal proglsam ,lng
then being uniaenaléen an radio stations
2EA Sydney and 3EA Melbourne by
creating a multie t it: » ’ ' ‘on sentice,
now SS Vltfilc .- eg_ular,trans:-:
mission on Qctelfieiz: 2

We should in nis.twa5/t . . '=’ ,;
or dismiss the political and social
exigencies which pisomptea the establish-
ment otss. .

Ihe pioinft is, fat course, that the
Channel 4 ggtidnw-iwith'§Wfiieti—l and the
AFC have been associated turns on the
enhancement at the clsianter, stnuetulze
and resources oi‘: SBS TV, with greatly
increased progr mom
independent ‘
nan-“in-hous I 4

l~tl:iink it is i or-tant In lite awaits at the
quite desultory treatme[...]

Here is a brief chronicle.

1975 Radio stations 2EA and 3EA begin
experimental transmission.

ABC requested to provide a per-
manent ethnic broadcasting service.

1 976

1977 Request to ABC withdrawn by a Fraser

Government exasperated by the
ABC’s indifferent response and the
SBS established.

Government proposes “Independent
and Multicultural Broadcasting Cor-
poration (IMBC). Senate refers legis-
lation to Standing Committee on
Education and the Arts which recom-
mends against proceeding. S[...]the rudimentary pro-
visions of the Broadcasting and Tele-
vision Act.

1980

Government abandons IMBC[...]ent

(March) of Special Broadcasting Corporation,
an independent statutory authority to
replace the SBS as recommended by
Connor and the SBS itself in its sub-
mission to Connor’sinquiry.

1986
(July)

Corporation proposal abandoned.
Merger of ABC and S88 announced to
achieve cost savings — all done very
suddenly in the budget context.

Legislation to merge ABC and SBS
defeated in the Senate. Issue referred
again to the Standing Committee on
Education and the Arts.

(Just prior to the July election) Govern-
ment abandons merger. Senate Stand-
iing Committee, not to be outdone,
recommends amalgamation should
procee[...]n) New Minister
Gareth Evans announces Government
is re-examining options including
"appropriately adapted” Channel 4
structure, amalgamation with ABC, or
as yetunidentified alternatives.

1987

1932

1 9.87

it may be useful, at this point, to refer
briefly to the report of the first inquiry by
the Senate Committee on Education and
the Arts when -it considered (and recom-
mended against) the legislation to create
the new TV service and turn the SBS into
the independent Multicultural Broadcast-
ing Corporation, as proposed by the
Fraser Government and the then Minister,
Tony Staley.

The report was presented to the Senate
more than seven years ago in August
1980 shortly before SBS TV began.

At page 15:

>’l'he,SBS in its evidence expressed great
om’"c uwimecsammympmwdea
fghly professional service that matches or
van surpasses that of the commercial
radcastersfiorthe ABC . . .

At page 28 the Committee says:

cerned that the movement
manent introduction (ie the
, , A 115 eng made without the necessary
. prel,imin'ary.preparation that would ensure its
success. (. . .)

evi‘deI1ce.a:-has not shown that the pro-
y d:.progitamming policies will necessarily
e successful in achieving a worthwhile
int‘ereuItural?‘:;exchange between those
;,pe_api_e o /th/epvarious ethnic communities
.—-an‘d3witl"iAus"‘tralian society at large.

Multiculturalism as envisaged by the IMBC
would seem to depend upon the popularity of
foreign language programs with English sub-
titling — a policy that on the basis of
evidence received is open to question and
hence a policy which will need considerable
experimentation.

That experimentation is still going on.
The fact is, however, that since the incep-
tion of ethnic and multicultural broadcast-
ing in Australia, a defined long-term role,
organisational structure and funding
mechanism for the SBS have proved
elusive to successive Governments and
Ministers. To me it is plain enough: the
program focus is somewhat too narrow;
the UHF transmission system alienates it
further from its potential audience; and
not nearly enough money is being spent
on Australian-made product.

So it is encouraging that the new
Minister should now be prepared to look
to the UK Channel 4 television model for
possible solutions to some of the SBS’s
problems. One cannot argue with his ex-
pressed view that things simply cannot be
allowed to continue as they are.

Most recent surveys suggest that, on a
raw ratings basis, SBS TV is achieving an
average share of little more than 1 per
cent of t[...]tan commercial ser-
vices generally achieve close to 90 per
cent.

Thus the effectiveness of using “multi-
cultural” television as presently provided
by SBS TV to achieve a significant degree
of “intercultural exchange” has to be
seriously questioned. Put simply: no audi-
ence, no intercultural exchange.

I realise that some of these judgements
may seem strident in the face of the high
degree of commitment and creativity evid-
enced by SBS TV since its inception.
Within its budgetary and technical limita-
tions SBS TV has shown itself willing to
be experimental and innovative. It has
attracted considerable interest abroad. Its
sub-titling unit enjoys a high international
reputation and has successfully rendered
much important non-English film and tele-
vision product accessible to Australian
and other English-speaking audiences.

Yet it is this very dependence for
reasons of cost upon ove[...]hich has
caused SBS TV’s multicultural function to
be perceived by much of the wider com-
munity as essentially foreign, fragmented,
and unrelated to even a pluralistic view of
the Australian cultural identity. The
danger in allowing such a perception to
become entrenched is that the policy of
multiculturalism will itself be marginal-
ised, ghetto-ised and ultimately sub-
verted.

The clue to broadening the “multi-
cu|tural" program philosophy lies in the
approach to the wider question of cultural
identity. A paper by Dr Peter Sheldrake,
formerly Director of the Australian Insti-
tute of Multicultural Affairs (now the Office
of Multicultural Affairs) contains the
following observation:

a key issue is that multiculturalism is
often spoken about as if it dealt only with
‘ethnic’ cultural issues. Academic examina-
tion of culture suggests that identity, and the
cultural basis for this, comes from a person’s
simultaneous membership of several over-
lapping but different groups.

Each person in our society belongs to
groups characterised on the basis of

FILMS THAT BEAR THE SIGN OF 4:
Comrades (top) My Beautiful L[...]ity, gender, class, occupation, geo-
graphy, etc. An approach to multiculturalism
which ignores these groups, and their contri-
bution to identity, will be both inadequate
and ineffective.

I would want to add a further dimension
to the charter of a broadcaster committed
to such a view of “cultural identity" —
and that is the dimension of assertion. For
it seems to me pointless to create such a
television service unless it undertakes a
dynamic cultural and social role. Bland
passivity in the face of racism, sexism,
social injustice, power elites, intellectual
reductionism and homogeneity for homo-
geneity’s sake is not much of an agenda.

After all, the Australian contemporary
culture in all its diversity is emerging at
precisely the same time as technology
and commerce impel us towards global-
ism. Unless we provide ourselves with
structures within which to achieve a con-
fident expression of our culture at the
non-mainstream as well as the main-
stream levels, our contributions to global
culture are more likely to be techno-
professional and accommodating.

Although the work I undertook for the
AFC developed a notional budget, pro-
gram expenditure profile and some cost-
equivalent advertising estimates for an
SBS/Channel 4 hybrid, much will depend
upo[...]

There will need to be more discussion,
consultation and structural development
before a concept of this kind can be trans-
lated into reality.

A number of threshold questions will
have to be addressed.

Firstly, what should we mean when we
talk of multiculturalism in television? How
do we deal, in that context, with such pro-
gram objectives as innovation, experi-
mentation, sophistication, st[...]rgeting of general or
specific-interest audiences as well as
general and specific-interest advertisers?

Secondly, should[...]e
question of multilingual television
separately? Are there desirable quotas
we should seek to meet and, if so, how
should they be accommodated within
either the SBS or the wider television
system?

Thirdly, in what ways will the creation of
this service impact upon our other tele-
vision services and can we now take other
special steps to ensure that other desir-
able broadcasting policy objectives are
achieved?

(For example, can we, in the overall
management of our television services,
accommodate a measure of public or
community access television? Should we
try to counter the centralisation of produc-
tion in Sydney? is there a case for the
special provision of educational television
material? Should not the charter of the
ABC be made more role-specific and its
structure refined accordingly? Should
there be more or less regulation of com-
mercial programming and station owner-
ship?)

Fourthly, what other future options lie
ahead consequent upon technological
advance or other factors. If PAY TV is just
around the corner, for example, what sort
of life expectancy would a channel of the
kind we have been discussing actually
have?

I realise that there is a danger here of
posing so many questions (and there are
a great many more) that one loses sight of
the original objective. The reality is, of
course, that in the matter of television
policy, this and other Australian Govern-
ments have shown themselves to be
markedly manipulative. In television and
politics, everything is now perceived to be
connected to everything else.

This proposal will generate both en-
thusiasm and resistance. It will require
goodwill, patience, candour, an enthusi-
asm for cultural and creative diversity and
a sense of realism to negotiate its many
merits and resolve its difficulties. But ulti-
mately I have to say I think it is the best
option at this time.

It is best because it will provide us with
a qualitative diversity of television pro-
gram choice in what is overwhelmingly a
homogeneous, mainstream market.

It is best because it will harness and
use efficiently resources which at present
are underutilised and bring the produc-
tion of non-mainstream programs into a
more market-related environment.

But most importantly it is best because
it could give us an opportunity to embark
on the confident celebration in television
of Australia's contemporary cultural
identity in more than just its popular
dimension. And that will change us all for
the better.

‘This paper[...]nnual SPAA con-
ference, held at Surfers Paradise in December last year.

34 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS[...]OSY

. .
1".‘
.

David Rose puts writers first. As commissioning editor at
channel 4, he has been re[...]than 100 films,
from The Draughtsman’s contract to Wetherby and Playing
Away, which have helped revitalise the UK film industry.

He became a founder member of channel 4 after 25 years at
the BBC, as drama editor at Birmingham and before that as
producer of drama series, including Z Cars.

In this interview with HUNTER GOBDAIY, he talks about the
impact of channel 4, script funding, and a trusting partnership
between finance and independent filmmakers.

The names Channel 4, and Film Four
International bring with them a stamp
of quality on the screen and also a
sense that English film production is
now divided into two convenient
periods . . . before and after Channel 4.

Yes, I'm aware of this and it's enormously
heartening the way Channel 4 has invigor-
ated the British cinema. It certainly was at a
low ebb; employment was very low in
1980-81 when we started and then soared
so quickly it became hard to get the
cameraman or editor you wanted. We were
filling a gap, of course, and it wasn't just a
question of jobs, there was a huge gulf
between the film industry and television,
and we've closed that gap.

Now I think it's a real partnership, par-
ticularly in the way the talent flows across
the two industries — writers and directors
are making films and not thinking too much
if it's for cinema or television, they're
making films, and certainly 95 per cent of
the films we're making now have theatrical
potential.

As you've said, Channel 4 has

dramatically altered the relationship
between television and cinema. Films
are now automatically linked to tele-
vision, from the beginning, whereas in
the past that connection came much
later . . . Channel 4 has changed the
sequence hasn't it?

In quality and content they're absolutely
linked. There's hardly a film being made in
Britain today that has not got television
money, upfront, assisting it to be made.
Television money has held together an
enormous number of films that otherwise
would not have been made.

And this has changed the ‘look’ of tele-
vision in the process?

Yes, it has. The P/ay For Today, and the
Video Play are having a huge struggle to
survive on television. I'm supporting six
one-hour video plays and we'll be screen-
ing them shortly. I'm particularly happy
about this because each one is from a
writer new to television. Perhaps one or two
of them will go on and write screenplays
and give something to cinema later. There
are still some television plays, but the

U)
m
,2:
.o
‘<
m
c.
E
E
Q
U7

Channel 4 produces very distinctive
films . . . is there a ‘Channel 4 film’, do
you have a signature?

I think it’s very difficult to say. Firstly, our
budgets are on the low side — when we
first went to air our target was 20 feature
films a year. It's dropped to 16 this year
simply because the production costs have
completely outstripped the budget.

In Year One I had £6 million to support
20 features. That gave me an average of
£300,000. Today the average cost is £12
million and my budget is £91/2 million. The
reasons for the early low costs were that we
were new, we were engaging independent
producers for the first time, and it was a
honeymoon period. We are trying to sup-
port low budget films — that doesn't mean
cheap films — and we look very closely at
the budgets so we know it's practical and
the money is on the screen, not in lush
limousines.

What, for you, is an independent film-
maker?

An independent is a production company,
a producer, linked possibly with a director,
who has his or her own company and is
entirely independent of the commercial
companies and the BBC. You might call
the writers and directors ‘freelance’, but
they are independent. When we came into
the field we were very anxious that the
independent sector would grow and thrive
because before 1980 independents had
hardly any opportunity for their work to be
seen on BBC or ITV.

Why was that?

I worked for the BBC. It made economic
sense, you have staff, staff agreements,
and you believe that by employing your
staff on all the programs in the best poss-
ible way you are making economic sense.
Of course you have a much greater degree
of editorial control over the program-
makers if you have them in-house.

We set out from the beginning at
Channel 4 to commission independents
while keeping at arm's length. I know
Jeremy lsaacs has always been very keen
that we should commission people with a
very clear understanding as to what they
were going to make for us, then they'd go
away and do it In my experience it
hasn't quite worked like that.

How does editorial control
ChanneI4?

In feature films we will only move when
we're satisfied with the script, that it is
within the ‘last touch’ of being satisfactory.
We have 2000 scripts to choose from each
year, in one form or another, and when
you're selecting 15 from 2000 you simply
go with the project you can see most
clearly and you believe in, the one that
excites you.

In contractual terms we have script
approval, approval of the director, key
crew, and central casting; we have access
to the shoot, access to the rushes, access
to the rough cut, and we have fine cut
approval. In more than 100 films we've
never actually had any[...]ople who make our films.

work at

We will argue, and persuade as hard as we
like but finally it's the work of the filmmaker
and that must be respected.

Comrades is an interesting example. It
was one of the first scripts on my desk in
1981 that I read. Comrades runs for three
hours and some say it needs to be that
length, others say shorter. Bill Douglas took
a long time editing the film and there was a
lot of discussion. In the end it was his film
and we stood by him. We've never insisted
that a director keep one scene and drop
another, because it's their individuality
we’relooking for. . .

And filmmakers will trust you because
of that attitude.

Yes, that's the key. We seem to have built
up a strong bond of trust.

Can we talk about this trust in partner-
ship between finance and filmmaker
. . . how does it work for writers?

At its purest we commission a script from a
writer and I think it is important that the trust
of Channel 4, the authority, is placed in one
commissioning editor. There have been
experiences in the past, say at the BFI Pro-
duction Board, where a group reads
scripts and finally arrives at a decision, and
there must be a question as to whether a
degree of risk and adventure goes out the
window if a project is passed over so that
an agreement can be reached more easily
on another. The same applied to the then
Film Finance Corporation.

I welcome the fact that British Screen has
now been formed and Simon Relph is run-
ning that and as far as I know it really is his
decision as to what films he goes with. The
same applies to Channel 4. I have to make
the decisions. There are a number of new
writers and we can't always give a contract
for a screenplay, so we might advise to
have a treatment first.

What sort of finance would you give?
We'd pay £2000 for a treatment.
And a screenplay?

The minimum is £12,500 up to the
acceptance of the final draft, plus another
5[...], so
for most scripts we earmark about
£25,000.

How many starts and finishes in one
year? I ask this because often there is a
problem when a culture is based on the
notion of success, yet in creative work
the level of failure is often very con-
spicuous. If a script gets investment
and it doesn’t work then that is seen as
a ‘bad’ decision . . .

When the script of My Beautiful Laundrette
or Playing Away is ready we budget it, and
put 100 per cent of the money in. I think
you've got to decide to go with a script or
not, if so, then you back it and ensure it
goes into production. I know that sounds
easy but there are some films where we've
had to look around for other money too, but
we've found it quickly and we haven't
spent money finding that money!

We consider about 2000 projects a year,
and of course a number of scripts are con-
sidered complete, but when we've gone
ahead with a project bought in that way we
usually ask for more work on the script. If
we are interested in an unsolicited script
then we buy it. I think it is only right that we
should show a positive interest in the script

by buying it, and that means paying a pro-
ducer to make the arrangements with the
writer to acquire the script, so there'd be
some money for the legal side of the con-
tract and perhaps £1000 for the producer.

We keep the development down as low
as we can as I don't see the point of splash-
ing your money u[...]his year
we might commission 12 or 16 screenplays
and I'll be very satisfied if three of those
went into production. You've simply got to

give writers the opportunity to write, pay
them to do it. The script cost is such a small

sum in the overall budget, and it's sensible
to keep it low because you hear of such
vast sums being spent in America on
screenplays, which seems to me unneces-
sarily generous.

Can you talk about Channel 4's experi-
ence with co-productions?

We do some, not many. We did one a few
years ago called A Song For Europe based
on the story of Stanley Ada[...]chemical conglomerate Hoff-
man La Roche.

It was a story that moved from Switzer-
land to Italy, France and England. Most of
the time we were able to cast, genuinely,
Italians who spoke English, as they did in
the real story, and there were only two
scenes that were subtitled. So, happily it
was English language but beyond that we
detest clubbing, we hate it, and with very
few exceptions we have nothing but sub-
titles.

There aren't many true co-productions,
but we have a reciprocal arrangement with
ZDF where we put the same amount of
money into each other's films and screen
them. A lot of our funding is with British
Screen, though we did give Agnes Varda
money to complete Vagabond from rough
cut by pre—purchas[...]heatrical
rights.

Do you think you’re creating a national
image with Channel 4 films?

I think many of the writers and directors are
dealing with subjects which they're familiar
with, with particular sense of time and
place, so they will be perceived as ‘British’
films, from the outside. I've no doubt we
have brought to British cinema a kind of
film that was not around before 1980.
Maybe it's more serious, and they certainly
leave the audience with something to carry
away with them other than the slushy
adventurous tales we are so often invited to
view which live for the moment but do not
give us anything to think about.

I asked the question because it is per-
ceived that Channel 4 is producing a
significant number of films which have
come to represent the current image of
England. Australian film financing is to
a large degree supported by govern-
ment agencies charged with the task of
creating an Australian cinema, an Aus-
tralian image. Perhaps this is instinc-
tive and not conscious?

It's not conscious. I think you’ve got to go
for the very best talent and I think some of
the best expression is on contemporary
subjects. Writers writing about what they
know, directors conveying to us vividly and
energetically what society is today. That will
actually do the job. You can't prescribe a
national cinema, it can only possibly
emerge.

CINEMA PAPERS MARCH — 35

0 The Family

0 Fatal Attraction

0 Made in Heaven

0 Manon Des Sources

0 Planes, Trains And

Automobiles
0 Rita, Sue And Bob Too

0 Sherman’s March
0 Tampopo
0 28 Up

0[...]ng aspect of
Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom is
the effect that it will have on South
African audiences, if they are ever
allowed to see it.

Technically, this extraordinarily
moving and mostly factual account of a
young black radical leader, Steve Biko,
and the blinkered white newspaper
editor whom he re-e[...]y Pretoria’s
censors for screening from April.

But it is not up to the censors tojudge
a f1lrn’s political impact. That is for the
Botha Government to decide. Whatever
the artistic merits and demerits of this
long and sometimes lavish production, it
is certain that for South Africans of all
colours this is emotional, social and,
above all, political dynamite.

If ever a country lent itself as a subject
for close cinematic examination, South
Africa, with all its wonders and horrors,
is it. Oddly, after all this time, Cry Free-
dom is almost alone in striving to make a
definitive moral statement on apartheid
in a form with international mass
appeal.

Attenborough, closely advised by
Woods, on whose book Biko the script is
largely based, starts Cry Freedom by
demolishing a replica of the Crossroads
squatter camp near Cape Town and,
along with it, any doubt that this film
will treat the white authorities kindly.

Indeed, the actors who portray the
security police enjoy a cliched ugliness
that seems excessive to anyone who has
not seen the real thing. Yet even john
Thaw’s Police Minister Kruger, who is
accurately portrayed as telling a ruling
National Party rally that Biko’s death
“leaves me cold”, gets a chance to rattle
off a few historical justifications for the
Afrikaner’s fiercely defensive attitude.

Thaw, who seems never to have
recovered from being a television detec-
tive, is made up to resemble a short, fat
Cary Grant with big, black-rimmed
spectacles and an accent that must make
Jimmy Kruger turn in his grave.

Two things filmmakers never seem to
get right are South African accents and
dummy newspaper front pages. Atten-
borough is no exception in Cry Freedom,
on either count. But the two main
characters, Kevin Kline’s Woods and
Denzel Washington’s Biko, are superbly
cast and for the most part convincing,
accents and all. Woods, by all accounts,
is much more ebullient than Kline’s por-
trayal and Washington’s evocation of
Biko is a little too saintly for comfort.

These are details, however, and they

fail to detract from Woods’ transforma-
tion from what Biko calls “a white
liberal who clings to all the advantages
of the white world” to one who in the
end is prepared to sacrifice the white
South African way of life -— and more
— to let the truth about Biko’s ghastly
death come out.

What is particularly notable is that the
Woods character never loses his almost
naive anti-heroism (“I was shaking like
a leaf,” he says after ordering police off
his property at gunpoint) while
managing to dominate the film — some
would say at Biko’s expense.

Biko, apart from the occasional re-
appearance in flashback form, is
whisked off to his death in a police Land
Rover halfway through the film, leaving
Woods to record his death as a martyr,

The remainder of the story concerns
Woods’s decision to flee South Africa
and his attempt to do so while disguised
as a Catholic priest, a segment which
falls back on just a little too much con-
trived emotion, humour and drama to
make the break from Biko’s dark suffer-
ings an altogether comfortable one.

This is the stuff of a hearty contro-
versy: is the film about Biko or Woods?
What is Attenborough playing at? There
will be some who find the sudden con-
centration on a white South African
family agonising over its future an
indulgence.

But Attenborough’s intention seems
essentially positive. Not all white South
Africans support apartheid; those who

do can be convinced to change their
minds. Some may even actively assist in
its downfall.

Is this the effect that Attenborough is
trying to achieve? Cry Freedom, like any
big-budget film, is a compromise
between an artist’s conscience and an
accountant’s bottom line. This produc-
tion has to play in Peoria as well as in
Pretoria, and the white Woods family’s
lengthy escape is probably a commercial
necessity.

Attenborough could counter this
criticism by saying that there is no use in
producing a moral masterpiece if no one
goes to see it, and he would have a
point. The result is a film which is partly
a political testimony, partly a ‘Boys’
Own’ adventure, partly an educational
documentary. As a blend it is difficult to

control, making the monumental

Soweto massacre re-enactment near the

end almost an “oh, and by the way
” intrusion.

But see the attention to detail:
brought to life is the famous press photo-
graph of a schoolgirl, face contorted in
grief, running with a dead sibling; there
in its callousness is the security police-
men leaning out of a car window to
shoot a fleeing child in the back, which is
precisely what was happening then —
and, for all we know since the intro-
duction of blanket censorship, what is
still happening right now.

Cry Freedom is an unapologetic indict-
ment of the world’s only institutional-
ised system of racial discrimination. In
its final moments, however, it has the
ability to reach out even into the heart of
Australia’s cosy conscience with a list of
many of those South Africans — white,
coloured, Asian as well as black — who
have died in police custody, with each
name followed by an official explana-
tion: “fell against chair”;[...]ll,
“no official explanation”.

Could this be a list of Aborigines who
have suffered a similar fate in one of the
world’s proudest democracies?

In this film, Attenborough has given
everyone something to think about,

Graham Barrett

CRY FREEDOM: Direct[...]play: John Briley from Donald
Woods’ books Bike and Asking For Trouble. Director of
photography: Ronn[...]ibutor:
UIP. 35mm. 157 minutes. UK. 1987.

0 MADE IN HEAVEN

Tears, which seem to appear so spon-
taneously, are, we think, most often con-
ventional responses to conventional
situations. One of us remembers listen-
ing to a sentimental song while shaving
some years ago, glancing into the mirror
and seeing his face streaked with tears he
had not known he was shedding. The
response was Pavlovian, to all intents
and purposes involuntary. This is one
reason why the commonplace distinc-
tion between ‘sentiment’ and ‘senti-
mentality’, or good and bad tears, seems
so misguided. It is only another distinc-
tion between Us and Them, good taste
and bad, one style and another.

Made In Heaven is a sentimental film.
This means that some people will think

CINEMA PAPERS MARC[...]

< it is all too much like a commercial for

toilet paper and that some of those who
cry will be ashamed. It is a film in the
line of Seventh Heaven, or Z00 In Budapest,
or Peter Ibbetson, a film of patent falsity,
of manipulation, of lies better than
truth. There are no ‘real’ characters or
situations in this film. Everything in it is
impossible.

In Made In Heaven the camera glides
constantly, forward, then backward, to
and fro — a slow waltz of camera, a
swaying and returning, sailing, hesita-
ting, until it is finally the movement
itself which is important, not what is
revealed by the moving. Style then, and
not substance, surfaces and not what we
pretend lies beneath them.

And the surfaces themselves are care-
fully, too carefully, decorated in today’s
colours, toned to designer taste (even the
opening, in black and white, points to
trendy fashion). This too, in time, will
add its charm to the whole, when those
colours, those patterns, are no longer
what one tries to escape, but rather what
we try to remember — what was it like
then, how did it feel, what did people
dream of?

The film is one of resemblances, feel-
ings, dreams. The story is a trap. A
young man (Timothy Hutton) dies and
finds his true love (Kelly McGillis) in
heaven. They are returned to life on
earth, with less than a lifetime to find
each other again or lose their love for-
ever. The story is a trap because it seems
to be, ‘classically’, about desire and loss
and searching. Moreover, it is a man’s
desire, loss and search which preoccu-
pies us. But to read it this way is to fall
into the trap of ignoring this film’s
manifest artifice and its obsessive stylisa-
tion. This is no story. It is a dance, a
configuration. There is no loss here, for
only one ending —- reconciliation — will
complete the figure. No desire, then, for
desire is dependent upon loss. No
search, for the finding is foreordained.

Instead, the film teases. Like the
camera, which is its substitute, the film
advances and withdraws, plays with the
possible and discards it, leaving for its
ending only what cannot be. Nothing in
this story between the arbitrary (deliber-
ately unmotivated) separation of the
lovers and their arbitrary (wholly coinci-
dental) reunion qualifies as a narrative
‘event’, which is to say there is no story
here —— merely a set of ‘incidents’,
happenings without narrative signifi-
cance, actions which have no bearing on
how the story turns out.

So this is why we call it a dance rather
than a story and why we say the story is
a trap. And this is why this sentimental
film, this film of conventional emotion,
is told in such an unconventional and
disquieting way. Transitions are abrupt,
elisions of time and space are un-
explained, which has the dual effect of
emphasising that indeed there is nothing
of consequence separating the lovers (or
that the time-space of heaven is not what
we are used to) and that what we are
watching is only a way of filling in the

38 — MARCH CINEMA PAPERS

time until they are brought together
again.

In the process we become acutely
aware of place. Place is our only means
of understanding what is going on, and
we learn to flick our eyes across the
screen, picking up clues, constructing
where and when we are, looking into
and beyond what is pushed up front, to
see surprises, lagnz'appe*, in the margin.
That is, we too begin to pay intense
attention to whatever is incidental,
insignificant; to enjoy the billed (and
unbilled) guest appearances, the bizarre
and banal circumstances in which the
lovers find themselves, the twists of
action which do not eventuate (strings of
inarticulate might-have-beens comple-
menting the capricious here-and-now
that we do see). In short, perhaps, to see
the movie rather than read the story.

And, obligingly, Made In Heaven
responds by making its places sharp and
clear, creating with wonderful economy
a sense of inhabited spaces. More than
that, its unnecessary incidents are, by
and large, interesting and entertaining,
sentimental and outrageous. When the
film is ——- abruptly and predictably —
over, certain kinds oflooking and show-
ing have played themselves through,
sentimentality has been invoked in what
might once have been called unsenti-
mental ways, feeling has prevailed over
logic as expression over content.

We don’t want to be too extreme
about this (even the length of this review
is extreme for us: do we have something
to explain?) Made In Heaven is awfully
slick, awfully yuppie now. Not your
thing, very likely. It almost was not
ours. Yet, finally there is the senti-
mentality of it, the evocation of mean[...]rs.

— They order, we think, this matter
better in the movies —

Bill and Diane Routt

MADE IN HEAVEN: Directed by Alan Rudolph. Pro-
ducers: Raynold Gideon, Bruce A. Evans. David
Blocker. Screenplay: Bruce A. Evans and Raynold
Gideon. Director of photography: Jan Kies[...]othy Hutton (Mike Shea/Elmo
Barnett). Kelly McGi||is (Annie Packert/Ally Chandler).
Maureen Stapleton[...]Floadshow.
35mm. 102 minutes. USA. 1987.

‘This is a word you might have missed in Down By Law
when that fat nasty cop says it to Tom Waits just before
he looks into the boot of his car. It's a New Orleans term
which means the extra little piece of candy the shop-
keeper throws in as a bonus. It's a useful word and
deserves wider circulation.

O TAMPOPO

Japanese audiences love to laugh at their

own foibles. Shochiku in the 1920s —
and later Toho in the 19305 — built up
their company assets by churning out a
steady supply of slapstick comedies.
When Ozu sta[...]p
working on studio comedies largely

composed of a string of gags. They were
called ‘nonsense films’. During the
thirties producer Kido Shiro added a
social realist component to the comedy.
Perhaps influenced by Chaplin’s
successful formula, he developed the
Shochiku studio genre — a mixture of
comic gags with sentimental stories
ab[...]he father of Tam-
[Jo/)o’s writer-director, was a popular
writer-director of comic samurai films in
the thirties. Long before Woody Allen
started making movies, his clumsy
heroes bungled their way to success in
love and war. His son, Juzo Itami, has
come late to directing, after a career as
an actor and film critic. His directorial
debut film, The Funeral, was a runaway
commercial success in Japan — and well
received at overseas film festivals. It
leavened its social comment with a
sprinkling of comic gags. Tampopo, on
the other hand, marks a return to an
earlier type of comedy — little social
comment, less narrative continuity and
more gags. Alternatively, its pastiche of
movie c[...]ltiplicity of mini-stories,
indiscriminate satire and anarchic
humour could be seen as marks of the

post-humanist if not postmodern
sensibility. . .
Like its predecessor, Tampopo

provides the audience with a learning
experience as well as plenty of gags.
This time it is the art of making ‘ramen’
(Japanese noodle soup) that the film
teaches us; in the former film, we learnt
all about the customs and rites of
Japanese funerals. However, unlike The
Funeral, Tampopo’s lesson is embedded in
a narrative which is constantly inter-
rupted by a succession of different
running gags — providing numerous
examples of crazy gourmets.

The central story is a parody of Shane,
the most popular American western in
Japan. A handsome stranger arrives in
town, helps a poor widow and her son
out of a tight spot, teaches them both to
become self—sufficient and, though
tempted to assume the roles of husband
and father, eventually moves on. In this
case, the hero does not ride a horse but
drives a truck; and, instead of teaching
her to become a successful farmer, he
teaches her to become a successful
noodle chef. The western connection is
underlined by the hero’s dress — he
wears a cowboy hat and boots at all
times — and the horns that decorate the
roof of his truck . . .