Cinema Papers no. 66 November 1987 (2025)

OCR

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MF6 PE

A magnetic film for synchronised sound/image recording. Polyes[...]

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-
lishers can accept liability lor any loss or[...]may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the express permission ot the
copyright owner. cinema Pape

rs is
published every two months by MTV

' Publishing L[...]ts shitty about

Australian film
8 COLOUR VALUES: The colourisation debate

CINEMA AND CHINA

10 ANN HUI: The woman from Hong Kong
13 XANADU: Film Australia goes to China[...]ured girls

20 JAMES BONDAGE: Pinning down 007
26 THE MALTESE FORD FALCON: Film noir, Melbourne style[...]RS

28 OVERVIEW: To market, to market
31 ON VIEW: The latest video releases
33 CLOSE-UP: The melt movie

34 SUPER 8: \X/hat’s new
36 BLEACH OF PROMISE: Who’s that blonde?

38 REVIEWS: Amazing Stories, Caravaggio, Down By Law, Hope And
Glory, The Lzghzhorsemen, Running From The Guns, She’: Gotta Have

It, Summer, The Untouchables

THE WRITE STUFF

50 NOVEL APPROACHES: The question of high fidelity
53 PASOLINI: On the script

54 SCREEN PLOYS: Screenwriters have their say

58
59
62
66
79
80

NEW ZEALAND REPORT: The Navzgazor finds its Way
PUBLICATIONS: Stuffing considered
TECHNICALITIES: TCP is AOK

PRODUCTION SURVEY: Who’s making what
CENSORSHIP: The July and August decisions

BACK PAGE: Nove[...]

FEATURES

- Best film: The Year My Voice Broke

0 Best achievement in direction: John Duigan, The
Year My Voice Broke

0 Best original screenplay: John Duigan, The Year My
Voice Broke

0 Best screenplay adapted from another source: David
Williamson, Travelling Nort[...]gh Tide

0 Best supporting actor: Ben Mendelsohn, The Year
My Voice Broke

0 Best supporting actress: Jan Adele, High Tide

- Best costume design: Jennie Tate, The Umbrella Woman

0 Best cinematography: Steve Dobs[...]Zero

I Best original music score: Paul Schutze, The Tale Of
Ruby Rose

0 Best production design: Brian Thomso[...]Zero

NON-FEATURES

0 Best documentary: Painting The Town

0 Best short fiction: Feathers

0 Best expe[...]film: Crust

0 Best direction: Christina Wilcox, The Nights Belong
To The Novelist

' Best screenplay: Jeffrey Bruer, Sue C[...]id Fanshawe, Alasdair Macfarlane,
Gary O’Grady, The Musical Mariner (Part One)

TELEVISION

0 Best te[...]s, A Single Life

0 Best actress: Michele Fawdon, The Fish Are Safe

0 Best miniseries: The Great Bookie Robbery

0 Best direction in a miniseries: Marcus Cole, Mark Joffe,

The Great Bookie Robbery
0 Best original screenplay:[...]ame Fassbinder’s last three films. According to the
biography by Robert Katz and Peter Berling, his l[...]a (1981) preceded Theatre In Trance, and this was the
third film most entrants named. Our winners, who will each receive a Copy
of the Katz/Berling biography, Love Is Colder Than Death, courtesy of
Australasian Publishing Company, are: Krystyna Pi[...]l.

WARREN BEATTY COMPETITION

We have six copies of David Thomson’s new book on Warren Beatty to
give away, courtesy of Heinemann. Thomson’s book bends traditional
notions of biography considerably — to win a copy of this intriguing work,
all you have to do is tell us the name of the film in which Beatty appeared
with Jean Seberg. Mark your entry ‘Beatty competition’, and send it to
Ci[...]Australian film company,

DEL, been affected by the
problems plaguing its

parent company in the

US? What has happened
to its distribution and pro-
duction[...]is
swept into Australia 13 months
ago to announce the opening
of a major film studio in the
land of Crocodile Dundee,
film industry pundits and
movie[...]rs
—— with extravagant box office
losers like the $50 million
Dune — but he had consider-
able reputation and clout.

Stock market investors
thought the float of his Aus-
tralian film company, De
Laurentiis Ente[...]er-
tainment Group (DEG), had
guaranteed to cover the nega-
tive cost of every film made by
DEL, to distribute the films
through its vast world—wide
network and to split the profits
with the Australian subsidiary.

-This agreement would sub-
stantially minimise the nega-
tive cost risks normally associ-
ated with film production and
provide, for the first time, an
Australian film company
access to ongoing distribution
in the US and other overseas
markets. In return, DEL
would acquire the rights to
distribute DEG’s new produc-
tions and films as part of its
250-strong library throughout
Australia and New Zealand.

DEG (which owns 47 per
cent of DEL) was, if you like,
a safety net which assured
investors that DEL would sur-
vive in a country where .the
small local market meant very
few films returned a profit. As
such, the contracts between

DEL managing director Terry Jackman

DEL and DEG have been
valued on the company’s
books at $20 million.

But today, both the film
industry and stockmarket have
turned on DEL. The initial
confidence that the US-based
DEG was going to power the
Australian industry and sup-
port DEL has turned[...]m release delays, and box
office flops abounding. After
a $15.5 million loss for the
quarter ending 31 May, DEG
was anticipating another loss
for the August quarter.

De Laurentiis is believed to
be searching for an equity
partner to help him pull DEG
out of the red. So far he is
reported to have had discus-
sions with Disney, 20th
Century Fox and Guber
Peters. The movie mogul has
also brought in two investment
banking firms to help
manoeuvre his company out of
its difficulties. The operation
has taken on an air of urgency
since it was revealed that
DEG’s financial backers could
require the sale of the com-
pany’s valuable film library by
the end of the year unless it in-
creased its new worth by $20
million by 15 November.

As gloomy reports of the US
operation filter back to Aus-
tralia, DEL shar[...]observers have
become increasingly nervous
about the local company’s
prospects -— even before it has
started production of its first
film. DEG was supposed to be
a failsafe for DEL but it is
itself now hanging perilously
over the insolvency cliff. What
would become of DEL if its

The increasingly bleak news
coming from Los Angeles also
fuelled rumours about the
local operation. Delays and
changes which may have other-
wise been accepted as par for
the course in a fickle industry
suddenly became objects of

great concern.
Why had DEL switched its

first scheduled production
from End Of The Line to Total
Recall? Why was the construc-
tion of the $10 million studio
in the Gold Coast’s hinterland
running four months behind
the prospectus target? Why
had production of DEL’s first
feature film been postponed to
February? Why had DEL
failed to meet its film release
schedule of 22 films in 1987?
Was DEL propping up DEG?

DEL’s managing director,
Terry Jackman describes the
stories of DEL funding DEG
as “absolute nonsense”. He
says no money has gone out of
DEL to its parent company
and that the first film distribu-
tion rights payments have no[...]dustry
blah blah,” he says vehem-
ently. “One of the reasons that
film industry companies do get
knocked down on the stock
market is because this industry
has the wonderful habit of
doing its very best to tear itself
to pieces.”

The stockmarket has,
indeed, been harsh on DEL.
The 50—cent shares shot to $1
soon after listing as the share
cowboys were swept up in
DEL’s buoyant promises. But
by mid-year, when the extent
of DEG’s problems came to
light, they were trading[...]price
makes things just that much
more difficult for companies
that want to raise additional

capital through the stock-
market.
Jackman says the invest-

ment industry does not fully
appreciate what DEG is doing.
“The financial markets don’t
understand the kind of lead
times involved and all of that.
A lot of investors took their
profits early on and said ‘We
can always get back into this
b[...]old
out.”

He concedes that DEG’s
problems in the US have not
enhanced DEL’s stock market
performance. After earlier
assurances that the US
organisation's malaise would
in no way affect[...]uld mean you
wouldn’t have one place to go
with your films, which we have
at the moment. We would have
to go to a number of places.”

The prospect of finding
buyers for DEL’s films doesn’t
daunt Jackman. “I’m con-
fident that DEG will come out
of these problems. But if they
didn’t for some reason, I’ve
been selling pictures around
the world for a long, long time
and we will make the sort of
films that would have some
overseas market. I am[...]ithout any diffi-
culty.”

Jackman’s strategy of
making relatively low-budget
films with wide American
appeal — rather than
parochial Australian extrava-
ganzas — is aimed at assuring
the company can profitably
sell all its films, even w[...]a $10
million Australian epic — only
one in 10 of those will work.
But if you go and make a $4
mill[...]tion.”

Notwithstanding Jackman’s
confidence, the main attrac-
tion of DEL for many was its
“failsafe” agreements with
DEG. With the US company
undertaking to return the full
cost of each production to
DEL, regardless of actual box
office receipts, it was hard to
see how the Australian com-
pany could lose. It is less likely
that a US film distributor
making an[...]eally answer that question
until I know where DEG is
going.”

DEG’s problems are affect-
ing DEL in another way too.
DEL aims to earn the lion’s
share of its profits from distri-
bution of international films
(both DEG’s and those from
other producers). Its pro-
spectus targeted the release of
22 films prior to 31 December
1987, 18 of which were to

come from DEG. These distri-
butions were expected to earn

DEL $13.5 million in its first
10 months. The DEL pro-
spectus itself states that profit
forecasts “are particularly
sensitive to the number and the
quality of films acquired by
DEG.”

But DEL is well behind this
film release schedule and Jack-
man says the reason is DEG.
“We didn’t have the delivery
from DEG because they’ve got
about a dozen films being held
up for various reasons of being

re-cut, marketing problems
and so on.”
He is confident, though,

that the release schedule of 35
films in 1988 and 39 the
following year will be met. But
again, any deterioration of
DEG’s financial situation
would make this more diffi-
cult.

Meanwhile Jackman seems
happier to talk about the pro-
gress of DEL’s $10 million
studio complex (75 per cent
financed by the Queensland
State Government with low
interest loa[...]ion schedule. Despite
prospectus projections that the
Cades County studio would be
completed and fully opera-
tional by November 1987,
Jackman says: “The studio is
making giant steps and will be
finished on schedule and on
budget and will open in
February.”

Jackman is planning five or
six films next year, including
t[...]rd’s science
fiction thriller, Total Recall
and the blockbuster miniseries,
Fatal Shore. Together, th[...]re expected to
cost about $40 million (well
above the average $5 to $10
million costs foreshadowed in
the prospectus) and take up
most of the studio’s space in
1988. The remaining smaller
films planned for next year
should cost about $6 to $8
million each.

Observers became nervous
about DEL’s apparent lack of
progress when it was an-
nounced that the company’s
first production would be
Total Recal[...]ebruary 1988 —
not as originally announced,
End Of The Line, commencing
in November 1987. But Jack-
man says the reason for the
switch was purely that film
director Bruce Beresford, who
is on the DEL board, was
enthusiastic about directing
Total Recall himself when
given the script to read in his
capacity as a board member.[...]e Bruce Beres-
ford says he’ll direct a picture
for you, you jump,” says
Jackman.

CONTRIBUTORS

Paul Aslanis is a freelance writer.

Raifaele Caputo is a lreelanee writer
on film.

Rolando caputo tutors in cinema
studies at La Trobe University and is a
freelance writer on film.

Brian Counts is television writer at
The Herald.

D

Anne-Made Crawford is a filmmaker
and writer based in Melbourne.

Michael Ereedman is publisher of
New Theatre: Australia.

John lilanrahan is Australian editor of
Hollywood Fiegorter and film writer

and critic at The Sun.

Fred Harden runs a production
c[...]cial

effects.

Melinda Houston is a bookkeeper
and closet writer.

Jane Hutchinson is a finance
journalist at The Age.

Linda Jalvln was ionnerli/3 Hong
Kong and China correspondent for
Asia Week. and is now a lreelance
writer based in Canberra.

Brian Jeffrey is a freelance writer
based in Canberra.

Paul Kallna is a freelance film writer
based in Melbourne.

Peter Kemp is a freelance writer on
film.

Brian Mcfiarlane is a lecturer in
English at the Chisholm Institute and
author of Australian Ginema

1970-1985.

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

Joanna lalurray-Smith is a
Melbourne writer and playwright.

Mike Nicolaldl is a freelance writer
and contributor to Variety.

Andrew Breston is a freelance film
writer based IFI Sydney.

Vikki Riley is a freelance writer on
lilm.

Sam Rohdle is a senior lecturer in
cinema studies at lsa Trobe[...]oi
Melbourne academics.

John Slavin is a critic.

Teck fan is a final year student at the
Australian Film, Television and Radio
Scho[...]

What’s the future for Australian filmmaking? New World’s Richard St J[...]AHAN reports.

RICHARD ST JOHN, managing
director of New World Australia,
slammed Australian film unions and
attacked the local film industry as
”non-commercial” in the most pro-
vocative speech at this year's motion
picture exhibitors’ convention.

He compared the Australian film
industry to a small band of trendy
shirtmakers whose product has
been, and will continue to be,
largely unsaleable to the worldwide
mass market. He called the commer-
cial failures the industry has pro-
duced in recent years ”idi0t[...]New World contri-
butions to $52 million. So far the
company has not selected any pro-
ject for production in Australia, but
has provided 25 per cent of produc-
tion costs to a number of films pro-
duced by its US parent company.

He told the convention that the
Australian industry should be
divided into two. There is ”a private
sector which is blatantly commer-
cial, they make movies to make
money. They make movies like
Kramer Vs Kramer and The Sound Of
Music, and there is absolutely no
dialogue about where the people
who make them come from, about
their cultural heritage or about their
ethnic authenticity or any of the
dialogue that I hear going on here,”
he said. ”That’s not to say that we in
the United States and in England.
Canada and other fi[...]s,
public broadcasting, film institutes,
that pay for those clearly uncom-
mercial films. But if you tr[...]en.

”And I think you have an example
ofthat in the last few years. Australia
is less than one per cent ofthe world
film market. And less than five per
cent ofthat one per cent is currently
going to Australian-made movies,
even i[...]c. In I983, I984 and 1985 less
than five per cent of the Australian
box office was taken by Australian
fil[...]Aus-
tralian filmmakers and they should
be given the chance to compete in
the world market from here. They
should not have to go to Hollywood
or[...]EMA PAPERS

His comments provoked a retalia-
tion from the Australian Film Com-
mission’s chief executive,[...]tainly don’t want to
think that I put myself in the role of
father, uncle, brother, friend or
confidant to a whole lot of idiot
children, or that all the colleagues I
have in the industry see me that
way,” he said, describing St Johns
comments as unfair and not repre-
sentative of the creative community
and film industry here.

”It was not representative in terms
of box office results, audience
research or creative or business
activity in the Australian film
industry.” He said that exhibitors
present would be able to think of "at
least 20 Australian films” that were
huge business successes. including
Picnic At Hanging Rock, the Mad
Max films, We Of The Never Never,
Puberty Blues, The Man From Snowy
River and Phar Lap.

He pointed out that only I80
features had been made since the
industry revival in T970. ”Of those
films, 35 per cent have got their
money back and paid real returns to
the investors involved, both govern-
ment and private — and that's a
better ratio than America.

”One of the things Dick neglected
to mention was that American films,
en masse, in aggregate in America,
are as unsuccessful as all of the films
from all of the other countries in the
world."

St John had earlier told the con-
vention that before his arrival here
he had expected that the future of
the Australian film industry would
be the same as everywhere else:
timeless, universal screen magic,
created by the combination of story,

Richard St John

direction and acting. ”The film
industry is a world-wide enterprise,
and thethe industry is inter-
national. Just what is meant by an
Australian film? I'm beginning to
div[...]ustralian made,
emblazoned with kangaroos instead
of polo players or crocodiles? Would
it mean shirts made in Australia
designed to compete on the inter-
national market, or for that matter
on the mass market in Australia,
with shirts made anywhere else in
the world?

”Let us say for instance that a
small but vocal and very trendy
cross-section of Australians insisted
on elbow length sleeves and collars
of kangaroo skin for their shirts.” St
John said the trendy shirts may do
well in the small trendy market and
get a great deal of media approval,
even win some awards. ”But I
would probably go broke, unless of
course I could get the government to
subsidise the making of Australian

shirts.” he added. And, he told the
convention, if the shirts did not sell

it was no good saying it was bad
taste on behalf of the mass market.

"The mass market knows what it
wants and it will put its money
where its want[...]ght be considered by
a minority to be better than the
movies of the market’s choice,” St
John said.

He warned that some elements in
Australia were in danger of denying
the market place the kind of films
that they would want to see. ”The
Australian film community has a
wonderful opportu[...]hat I
feel very privileged to come here to
share. The skills and the talents to
forge ahead on the international
market are here, in place, they’ve
been paid for,” he continued.
”When I say international, I'm in-
cluding the Australian mass market.
I believe it is time for the Australian
film industry to stop cringing. It is
time for the Australian industry to
exploit the world market. Not to be
exploited by the world market. Not
to sit at home whinging about b[...]think we have to do films
that are marketable on thethe Australian-
made Christian Broadcasting Net-
work[...]er cases like it must truly be a
classic instance of shooting yourself
in the foot,” he said.

”For some time I have been
examining my own thought pr[...]-
can. But they are not. Gillian Arm-
strong, who is certainly one of the
more Australian of the world class
filmmakers, has been quoted as
saying[...]ing here, she says, ‘I feel I should just
make the films I want to make and
not have a conscience about where I
work.’ What changed an Australian
fi|mmaker’s attitude? A strike. The
only way an industry is going to sur-
vive anywhere is to keep its talented
people home and working.

”You can’t do it by driving the
Gillian Armstrongs out of the
country, the Bruce Beresfords or the
Peter Weirs.”

Asked after his speech what sort of
films New World Australia planned
to make here he[...]s.” And when did he
think production on any one of
them might commence-2 ”When we
find them.” He said the company
was presently looking at more than[...]

The Women’s Film Fund is able to provide a subsidy
of up to 75070 on a limited number of places on
approved courses until June 1988.

If you wish to attend a specific technical training
course please write to Penny Robins, Manager
Women’s Film Fun[...](03) 690 5144 or Toll free
008 338430) nominating the course you wish to
attend, detailing your previous experience, reasons for
wishing to attend the course, the overall cost of
attending the course and the amount of subsidy you
are seeking.

Please note some courses will apply their own selection[...]urse participants and applicants who are eligible for the Women’s Film Fund
subsidy cannot be guaranteed of obtaining a place on the course. Early
application is advised.

CINEMA CLASSICS

AUSTRALIAN CINEMA
1970[...]cFarlane
A superb book celebrating

fifteen years of excitement

and discovery.

“. . . an informative,

absorbing and, between the

lines, amusing read . .

JOHN BAXTER “THE

WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN”
Price: $32.95

FRENCH CINEMA Roy Armes
The French film industry has
influenced every decade since

the invention of cinema.

French Cinema focuses on the
filmmakers themselves and

their contributions to the

world cinema.
Price: $24.95 Paperback

WARREN BE[...]WITH

AUSTRALIA’S BEST.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE NOMINEES & WINNERS

OF THE 1987 AFI AWARDS

FEATURE FILMS. The Tale of Ruby Rose

Vincent

Warm Nights on a Slow Moving[...]Safe

Just Us
In Between

DOCUMENTARIES Painting The Town

How The West Was Lost

The Hour Before My Brother Dies

CINEVEX FILM[...]

eware. The copy of Frank
Capra’s 1946 It's A Wonderful

Life that you pick off the shelf
of your video library is what many
would consider a counterfeit. Sure,
it’s the sweet, loving film of a
washed-up family man (played by
Jimmy Stewart) whose faith is
restored by a dizzy guardian angel
named Clarence — only this time
it's in vivid colour. The same goes
for Roger Corman’s 1961, two-day
wonder film The Little Shop Of
Horrors, as well as the Fred
MacMurray-starring The Absent-
Minded Professor and Night Of The
Living Dead.

lt’s A Wonderful Life is one of
the films that has figured
prominently in the furore over the
colourisation issue in America —
partly, perhaps, because of its
place in popular and film culture,
as well as the comments of its
leading actor Jimmy Stewart, who
has admitted that he could not sit
through the whole of the
colourised version. “The faces are
orange-yellow, and the shadows
are not there, except for great, big
shadows which are blacker than
black,"[...]omments, however,
would have us believe that it's the
quality of the process that he finds
objectionable. The real opposition
to colourisation concerns the

8 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

We might not see Jean Harlow as a brunette,
but the recent development known as
colourisation will be[...]ve never seen them before. PAUL KALINA
reports on the controversy it has provoked.

question of creative control, the
integrity of works that belong to an
historic and cultural heritage and
the rights, in this case, of a
computer company to tamper with,
and then profit from, another's
creative work. The late John
Huston, whose film The Maltese
Falcon is scheduled to be
colourised, called it “as great an
impertinence as for someone to
wash flesh tones on a Da Vinci
drawing". Asks Fred Zinnemann,
honorary president of the Directors
Guild of Great Britain: “Can you
conceive seeing Sunset Boulevard
or Stagecoach or The Best Years
Of Our Lives in colour, bastardised
by people intent on squeezing the
last possible penny out of
marketing these pictures?”

Color Systems Technology has
an estimated $20 million of
projects that include Ted Turner’s
collection of more than 3000 films
from the old MGM, Warner Bros
and RKO libraries. The other player
is Colorization Inc., a company
partly owned by Hal Roach
Studios, whose schedule includes
Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon,
They Drive By Night, Laurel and
H[...]udio‘s
ability to copyright colourised
versions of films drawn from the
public domain — where there are
an estimated 17,000 old black and
white films. The question is
whether the Copyright Office of the
Library of Congress deems the
process of colourisation itself an
original work of authorship and
therefore copyrightable. Without
copyright protection, it seems
most unlikely that the large amount
of money ($US2000 to $3000 per
minute, $250,000 per feature) will
be invested in the process.

CEL distributes the colourised
versions of It's A Wonderful Life
and Night Of The Living Dead, and
has an option on some of the films

currently undergoing a paint job at
Hal Roach Studios. Meran Kidd is
product manager of CEL’s sell-
through division and believes that[...]verseas sales figures (according
to an article in American Film, the
colourised It's A Wonderful Life
sold 55,000—75,000 copies, as
opposed to 10,000 copies of the
black and white original in 1985
and 1986) and adds that the
“intrigue” of the new process will
provoke curiosity. Interestingly, the
only evidence to support the oft-
made claim that the video-renting
public doesn’t like black and white
films is CEL’s finding that they do
not work as well in the rental
market as in sell-through (ie sold
directly to the public as
collectibles) where they work
“astronomically well".

Whilst acknowledging the artistic
value of a film like The Elephant
Man and others “made in black
and white for a purpose", Kidd
believes that many of the films
being colourised would have been
made in colour if the stock and
technology had been readily
available. The proponents of
colourisation have argued that the
process does actually enhance
certain films, and have also
pointed out that the original
versions will still be available.

How well the original and
colourised versions can co-exist is
hypothetical, especially given the
imminence of television
broadcasting. Channel Ten has
indicate[...]ilms and, according to
a station publicist, under the flag
of ‘Mr Movies’ Bill Collins. Channel
Seven is closely linked to the very
heart of colourisation with its
owner Universal Telecasters also
having a 35 per cent share of Hal
Roach Studios (8 & T reports that

(D WASP white
True blue

(33 Fled-blooded
American red

® Zane grey

.1

this share will increase to 58 per
cent next March). According to
Channel Seven, the process is
being closely monitored, and it is
too early to tell whether colourised
films will be shown.

Thus far, the Directors Guild of
America, the American Film
Institute, the Writers Guild of
America West, the American
Society of Cinematographers, as
well as directors such as St[...]edly prompted
by Woody Allen’s comments
against the process in a New York
Times article, Senator Moynihan is
considering offering legislation in
the US Senate similar to that
proposed in the House of
Representatives, which would
require the “artistic creators" of a
film to grant their consent before
alterations, like colourisation, could
be made. Meanwhile, the Directors
Guild in Britain has successfully
negotiated with the BBC not to
broadcast colourised versions from
the list of 100 films that the guild
seeks to protect, and has
convinced Channel[...]t feels like Wim
Wenders’ black and white Kings Of
The Road, as much a homage to
the American cinema as it is about
the death of cinema, is a bleak
premonition. As George Stevens
Jr, chairman of the American Film
Institute puts’ it, “A generation
from now no viewer will have a
sure sense of how the world has
been seen through the eyes of
John Ford, Willy Wyler, Alfred
Hitchcock, Orson Welles, or any of
the great figures who did so much
to define American filmmaking."

and consistency.
H621 /H621[...]c videocassette. H421 M
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Ann Hui is one of Hong Kong’s best known
and least predictable fi[...]reer that has spanned
kung fu, murder, ghosts and the liberation
of Da Nang.

rouble at the Six Harmonies Pagoda. This ancient

tower in the southern Chinese town of Hangzhou had

been surrounded by hundreds of archers and lancers.

Inside, the emperor, the Son of Heaven himself, was
being held captive. A bit silly of the Occupant of the
Dragon Throne to have fallen for the beautiful-
courtesan-in-the-empl0y—of-rebels trick, of course —
oldest one in the book. A keen eye might have discerned
a distinctly unmartial atmosphere among the troops,
who, while waiting for further orders, swatted at each
other playfully w[...]ne’s attention was riveted by a command
shouted from an upper storey of the tower. It came from
the only person who could make both loyalists and rebels
sit up and take notice: Ann Hui, one of Hong Kong’s
best known, least predictable and most adventurous
filmmakers. Having been one of the group of pioneering
young directors to lead Hong Kong cinema away from
the kung fu cliché in the late seventies, Hui decided it
was time to try her hand at this most stereotypical genre
of Chinese cinema. The result of three years of prepara-
tion and hard work, her martial arts epic, The Book And

10 —— NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

The Sword had its world premiere in Hong Kong in
August, where it was an outstanding critical success. The
two-part film was screened at the Toronto Film Festival
in September.

The Book And The Sword is based on one of the most
famous novels by Jin Yong, considered the modern
master ofthe London Film School. When
she returned to Hong Kong in 1975, she worked briefly
as an office assistant to the director King Hu (A Touch
Of Zen). Moving on to television, Hui directed some 20
episodes for various tele-drama series and 20 half-hour
documentaries.

Her first theatrical feature film, The Secret, came out
in 1979. Large portions of the film were shot in Hong
Kong island’s Western Di[...]ed tenements and narrow “ladder streets”
lent the area a special character long after other parts of
the territory had been taken over by multi—storeyed[...]ng apartment blocks and glitzy
department stores. The Secret is a cleverly constructed
murder mystery, with a strong and sinister sense of
locale. Well received at the London and Edinburgh Film
Festivals, it establish[...]important new talent.
It also gave her a place in the vanguard of a new trend
towards cinema verite in Hong Kong cinema which took
film out of the studios and onto the streets.

“I didn’t consciously decide to be innovative,” Hui
says. “Many of us simply brought our TV stock—in-trade
with us into the cinema. I was just doing things as I knew
how.” As for being one of the first women to break into
what had traditionally been the dominantly male pre-
serve of Hong Kong filmmaking, she says that “When
working, I’m not conscious of being a woman.”

Hui’s unusual upbringing may[...]ing (or categorisable) >

ICE-CAPADES: Ann Hui on the set of The Book And The Sword

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER — 11

In her second film, The Spooky Bunch, Hui turned
her attention to the world of Cantonese opera. Released
in 1980, it was a comedy involving ghosts, folklore and
the underworld. In one hilarious scene, a girl possessed
by a spirit suddenly gets the urge to watch television.
Traditional Chinese practice is to burn paper effigies and
money for the dead in the belief that what is burnt is thus
transmitted to the “other side”: contemporary Hong
Kong funerary goods stores offer a range of combustible
amenities from swimming pools to Porsches. So a paper
television is burnt for the girl, and she watches, literally
entranced, as images from an English language-teaching
program rise up from the flames. “Fork,” says the tele-
vision instructor. “Fuk,” repeats the girl.

Turning to yet another genre, Hui then made The
Story Of Woo Viet (1981), a violence-ridden story of two
Vietnamese refugees who get caught up in the Manila
underworld while trying to reach America u[...]it returned to a theme Hui
had first explored in the TV film Boy From Vietnam.

Hui’s best known “Vietnam film”, however, was her
next project, the ambitious and highly controversial
Boat People (1982). Based loosely on a Japanese novel,
it tells the story of a Japanese photo-journalist who wit-
nessed the communist “liberation” of Da Nang and
returns to Vietnam several years later. He starts out sym-
pathetic to the regime, or rather the image ofthe sound
of gunfire, for example, the children cry “The chicken
farm!” He follows them as they run to what turns out to
be an execution ground, where they strip the fresh
corpses of watches and false teeth. Eventually, no longer
able to play the neutral observer, he sells his camera
equipment on the black market to finance their escape
on a packed[...]ng them to freedom,
however, costs him his life.

For Boat People Hui insisted on re-enacting the libera-
tion of Da Nang, complete with huge crowd scenes and
tanks rumbling down the street. One of the most extra-
ordinary and dramatic scenes in the film, however, is
that which takes place on a minefield left over from the
war. In a tense atmosphere comparable in horro[...]' fa‘ 7 -. ‘.‘,_- .

TAKING FIVE: An extra from The Book And The Sword at rest

12 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

The Story Of Woo V/‘er

scenes in The Killing Fields, prisoners and other con-
scripts are forced to bellycrawl across the field picking
out the mines with sticks.

Boat People was shot on Hainan, a tropical island
which is part of China’s Guangdong Province, is close to
Vietnam and shares much of that country’s landscape
and architecture. Hui had the full co-operation of the
Chinese authorities, who provided her with tanks,[...]between China and Vietnam were already tense, and the
Chinese authorities liked the idea of anti—Vietnamese
propaganda for which they would have to take no direct
responsibility.

They did not anticipate that as soon as the film
premiered in Hong Kong, critics immediately[...]as a
typical comment. One official who’d vetted the script
lost his post, but there never was any official statement
or protest, the Chinese authorities clearly having decided
that discretion was the better part of face-saving. It was
left to the European critics to fulminate against the
film’s “ideological unsoundness” when Boat[...]Hong Kong audiences, meanwhile, flocked to see the
film in droves. This was surprising and wholly unpredict-
able, for until then politics of any kind had been con-
sidered box office poison[...]keep its
rice bowl filled. Boat People became one of the ten top-
grossing films in Hong Kong cinema history, with
takings of more than $3 million.

The filming of The Book And The Sword was an epic
in itself. A co—production be[...], it required location shoot-
ing all over China, from the ancient cities of Suzhou and
Hangzhou in the south to the former imperial hunting
resort Chengde, north of the Great Wall; from the
villages of the Yellow River basin to the Taklamakan
desert in north-western Xinjiang (Chin[...]he cites communication and physical hard-
ship as the most difficult aspects of shooting in China,
but says these were offset by “inspiring” locations.
Besides, she says, “Sometimes the difficulties themselves
become exciting. And the way the [mainland] Chinese
pay at least lip service to the fact that film is a cultural
thing . . . is quite a relief from the totally money-
oriented atmosphere of work in Hong Kong.”

Chinese producers may present the filmmaker with
other sorts of problems. The mayor of Tianjin, Li
Ruihuan, demanded to see the film before the negative
was released to Hui for final post-production work. He
wasn’t thrilled. According to Hui, who flew to Tianjin
with the producers for the mayoral screening, “he had
some reservations about the characterisations — mainly
that [the rebel chief] was ‘not heroic enough’ and the
Qianlong emperor ‘too glamorous’.” Still, he conceded
that the film could be released in Hong Kong first, and
Hui agreed that the Tianjin studio could edit it according
to their own aesthetic and political needs for release in
China itself.

Ann Hui turns 41 next y[...]ong Kong, she occasionally turns to sooth-
sayers for predictions and advice —- her luck will take a
turn for the better once she reaches 41. Not that it seems
to[...]a’s four-part series, Roads To
Xanadu, examines the paths taken by
Europe, China and Japan in the quest for an
ideal society. TECK TAN talked to pro-
ducer and presenter John Merson about the
preparation for the program.

_; It *

XA‘N.ADL‘J:~ Poorc[...]an

A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where /-llph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sun/es: sea.

hus did the English poet Coleridge, under the

influence of opium, describe his vision of his paradise

Xanadu, looking to the East for relief from the

bleakness of the Industrial Revolution. A paradise it
certainly wasn’t, especially under the British—imposed
opium trade of the 19th century. When East met West
under the gun-boat diplomacy of the Opium Wars in
China it was very much a one-sided affair. How was it
that a culture 2000 years old, once the most powerful
kingdom in the world, one that had developed gun-
powder, printing and currency when Europe was still in
the Middle Ages, could be so humiliated 300 years later
by the new European powers?

This will be one of the many questions posed by
Roads To Xanadu, a four-p[...], author, ex—ABC Radio presenter
and descendant of George Morrison, the Australian

journalist privileged to be one of few Western witnesses >

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER ~ 13

of the Boxer Rebellion in China, is the producer, writer
and narrator of this series. He contrasts the different but
interrelated paths taken by Europe, China and Japan in
the quest for an ideal society. The Industrial Revolution,
Confucianism and the Meiji Reformation are juggled
about with the confident skill of a well—versed analyst.
Merson has the obsessive interest in his subject matter
that wil[...]happened with
Bronowski in his equally ambitious The Ascent OfMan
for the BBC many years ago.

The series is not intended to be an elaborate history
lesson nor a dry account of the rise of technology. By
comparing aspects of East and West — the Papacy and
Confucianism, the Venetian mercantile class and the
Chinese agriculture-based society, the Enlightenment
and the classical Chinese examination system, the Euro-
pean revolutions and the eternal Dragon Throne —
Merson hopes to show the philosophical foundations
that drive a society to innovate and advance. The last
two parts of the series bring us up to the present and
future; how Japan became the economic and military
power it was at the beginning of this century and how
China is still grappling with the problem of modernising
without Westernising, a problem that if solved could
well propel the dormant giant into technological

superiority in the next century.
One may well ask why it is that a series which

14 —— NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

examines, amongst others, the role of Confucian
ideology, the Chinese Imperial system and post—Mao
economic pragmatism in Chinese social progress, is
being made in Australia. The more pertinent question
perhaps is why not. Conventional wisdom has Australia
looking to Europe for a cultural identity. Yet relations
with our closer neighbours emphasise that Australia is
geographically and politically situated in Asia.[...]tners, and our migration make—up has
changed in the last decade to reflect more accurately our
regional awareness.

Appropriately, this $1.8 million series is jointly under-
written by Sunshine Australia Ltd, whose founder is Lee
Ming Tee. He is a Chinese Malaysian, now an Australian
citizen, who is a member of Australia's new entre-
preneurial class from the East. The series has had a fairly
smooth path to production, considering the many
financial problems that can plague a project.

The idea started when Merson was a lecturer in
History and Philosophy of Science at the University of
New South Wales and was subsequently presented as[...]grant in September 1985 enabling him
to research the television series further in China and
Japan. His previous working relationships at the ABC
with Robin Hughes, now the general manager of Film
Australia, and with David Roberts, the director of this
series, led him to approach Film Australia, who agreed
to the long-term project commitment of three years.

The series already has a pre-sale to the ABC, BBC and
an American-based PBS station. The crew, having com-
pleted location shooting in Eur[...]urrently in China and Japan. Television broadcast is
aimed at late 1988. It seems to be one of those projects
that can easily sell itself on its own merits. And why not
when the questions it raises are recognisably relevant and[...]Japan’s
economic advancements. Could it be that the rest of theis
. ‘E. a‘. 3.‘ _
! ,, ‘xi I’
< . V), I[...]24‘ \

textile industry

XANADU: Model of a water frame used in the.

Due to the ever increasing demands of the
entertainment industry, we have been
forced to ex[...], Person-
alities, Computerised Cross Referencing
of Services, Speed Packs, Hotels, Limo-
sines, Couri[...]ies, Rushes.

Wetryharder

V V V V >
“a move in the right direction”

Our new address

3rd Floor-,[...]—
(03) 648 1706

Toll Free: (008) 331 344
Users of Keylink —
Telex: (021) 10717545
Fax: (03[...]

‘mane
¥i'§?.'SBllll5li

arias

THE
l\/IOVIES
OF
CHINATOVVN

Dim Sum and Yellow Earth might have
been the hits on the arthouse circuit —— but
what about My Cousin The Ghost and Jet
Lee ’s Shaolin Temple Part II? KATHY
BAIL reports on the other face of Chinese
cinema in Australia.

ontrolled by two[...]ess in Hong Kong and virtually no connections

to the Australian film industry, Melbourne’s

“Chinatown” cinemas attract young audiences more
intimate with the kung fu fantasy formula than the
politics behind the Chinese ‘arthouse’ films celebrated
by Australian critics.

The Chinatown Cinema and the Broadway constitute
one of the smaller outside markets boosting the profits
of the Hong Kong film industry. Hong Kong—made
films are estimated to pull in about $100 million a year
on the foreign circuit. High turnover and highly-
venerated stars are the key to the cinemas’ success.

So it was unusual when Wayne Wang’s feature about
a Chinese-American family, Dim Sum, had a season at
the Broadway. It didn’t quite match the box office hit,
Flaming Brothers, but it ran for a week, following a
six—week season at the Longford, a cinema few Chinese
would normally consider for a Saturday night out.

K.T. Mok, distributor and manager of the Broadway,
rarely has to deal with “outsiders”[...]y considers film “purely business”, like many
of his colleagues in the Hong Kong industry), alongside
the main Chinese distributor and exhibitor in Australia,
Chinatown Cinema Pty Ltd, is usually quite separate
from the film industry here: their links are with Hong
Kon[...]distributors and
exhibitors they have this sector of the market tied up.

Chinatown Cinema acquires product for its six
cinemas through the agent Joe Sui International Film
who represents m[...]has his own
office in Hong Kong and buys directly from these
companies and other independents. So what’s popular
in the territory ends up on the screen here; according to
Mok, there is nothing specific about this market:
popular marti[...]ng which Chinese/I-long Kong films are
“good” is a matter of being on the inside: it’s word of
mouth. You won’t find Peking Opera Blues, Orders
From Forbidden City, The Body Is Willing, or My
Cousin The Ghost advertised in the daily papers, but
there will be leaflets in Chine[...]restaurants and fantastically designed posters in the
cinema foyers.

Background information about the films can be
gleaned from magazines imported from Hong Kong and
even if you find a translator, you’re more likely to get
gossip on the stars than a “review”, a form of criticism
that seems strangely out of place. The love/hate
relationship that usually exists between film critics and
distributors is non—existent for the Chinese cinema
proprietors. Not only would the film have finished its
season by the time a review appeared (the program
generally changes once a week; a film that gets a “long
run” is around for two weeks) but no critic could
disrupt a system of popular entertainment based on star
power or popular genres like kung fu.

Most of the films screened in the Chinese cinemas in
Australia are in Cantonese, and though one would
never guess from the posters, all of them have English
sub-titles. This may be reassuring but many of the
Hong Kong films operate largely on verbal humour,
and if you are one of the one per cent of non-Chinese
in the audience, you can often miss the joke.

Screenings are continuous; on weeke[...]

She says that the cinema used to be a very popular
pastime before the Chinese video outlets opened.
“Everyone used to go to the cinema! Or when
communities wanted to raise money[...]ople happy to buy a ticket and go to a
movie. Now the situation has changed. People don’t
talk about what’s on at the cinema very much. In
conversation it hardly comes[...]amilies prefer to hire a video, even invite a
few of their relatives around. It’s a get-together — they
have dinner and watch a film, instead of driving the
car, especially Chinese families, how many numbers,
sometimes you need three cars!”

The broader range of films available on video may
also contribute to its popularity. For those wanting
films in Mandarin, or even Taiwanese films, video is
really the only alternative. Chinatown does pick up
these kinds of films but the bulk of its product is in
Cantonese. There is also every likelihood that a film is
available on video before it is released theatrically. “It
is very hard to control the market for videos,” says
Mok. “The control of rights is less stringent here than
America. There is a lot available.”

But according to David Tien, manager of the
Chinatown Cinema, most young people still want to
go to the cinema. He says his cinema opens films
almost sim[...]ith Hong Kong. Audiences
have probably read about the latest Jackie Chan
or Chow Yong Fong in the Hong Kong papers
(which devote at least two pages[...]comedy
features are Chinatown’s staple; once in the door, you
may as well be in Hong Kong.

Esther Woo is critical of the dominance of Hong
Kong cinema and says the Chinese films that are
imported, like Yellow Eart[...]ly distributed in
arthouse cinemas and cater more for Australian
audiences, and those films that are selected for the >

The kids from Shaolin

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER — 17

For Woo, not even SBS is a saving grace: “I have
asked SBS why they always show the same films. Not
only are they out of date, but it makes me upset
because they show people the wrong way of life.
Audiences will think Chinese people always[...],
blood everywhere. That’s wrong. They are only the
really awful Hong Kong-produced films. The good films
are never shown because they do business with the same
people.”

Apart from video, SBS is where most people view
Chinese or Hong Kong films. The Cantonese drama
series Empress Wu has had audiences glued to the
television screen for weeks. Peter Barrett from the
programming department at SBS claims there is no rigid
formula for selection, though certain parameters are
taken from census statistics. In 1985/86, 2.6 per cent of
total program time was devoted to Chinese language
films, that is 82 hours, 34 of which were in Cantonese
and 48 in Mandarin.

Marena Manzoufaf, head of acquisition at SBS, says
most of the TV product comes from Hong Kong, while
feature films are generally bought through the China
Film Export and Import Corporation. She, ho[...]Esther Woo and feels they do present a
good range of films. “In 1980/81, we bought some
features from Hong Kong but the problem was that

Private Life

18 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

most of the product was too violent: it was either cops
and r[...]commercial productions. We started getting films from
China which were a lot more serious and thoughtful
than the Hong Kong product.

“We tried to get more films[...]Hong Kong but they were reluctant to sell
because of video piracy. People get an off-air recording
then re-market them.”

(SBS pays a flat rate of $5000 for a film which gives
the station licence to screen it three times over seven
years. After making the initial offer, it usually takes six
months to get the film and six months to process it. The
sub—titling is done at SBS. “Some companies are
reluctant to make a TV sale until they have exploited
the cinema release,” says Manzoufaf. “So sometimes
they are a little out-of-date.”)

SBS has recently acquired the rights to A Summer At
Grandpas, One And Eight, Bl[...]d, in
Mandarin, Neighbours.

dmund Allison, owner of the independent

distribution company, Quality Films, was the first

“outsider” to bring a Chinese film to Australia. He

imported The White-Haired Girl in 1953, but now
has more interest in Japanese and Soviet cinema. “I
haven’t seen many of the recent films, but the Chinese
films I used to have were never really commercially
viable,” he says.

Since then, Andrew Pike of Ronin Films, is one of
the few who has dared venture into what is unknown
territory for most Australian distributors. Yellow Earth,
which[...]ney and Melbourne, and may even find its way into
the Chinese cinemas. Ronin has also acquired the
satirical comedy Black Cannon Incident through the
China Film Corporation and is negotiating to buy Swan
Song, directed by Zhang Zeming, which was seen at the
1986 Hong Kong Film Festival.

Pike has found the corporation “quick and efficient
on the titles they want to sell”. Yellow Earth and Bla[...]“China has certainly become more aggressive in
the marketing of their film product. Just getting the
print can be expensive. Indigenous film stock is poor
quality and they won’t use it for export so special stock
is imported which increases the costs.

“Also, with Yellow Earth, the sub—titling was very
poor and had to be done again. We shared the costs
with the British distributors.”

But it has been when he has attempted to deal with
the Australian-based distributors of Hong Kong product
that he has run into real probl[...]i’s company difficult to deal with,”
he says. “The films are very expensive and I think he is
doing a disservice to producers in Hong Kong because
he only does business with the Chinese cinemas. He is
not aware there is business beyond that market.

“I have bought two Jackie Chan films from Joe Sui,
Police Story and Young Master, which ran[...]didn’t go very well. I had to pay a high price
for them with little return. In fact, we lost money doing
it. I’d love to run 21 Jackie Chan festival, but the biggest
stumbling block is the distributors!”

Until then, buy some sunflower seeds and queue up
for a session of kung fu at a Chinese cinema. Watch
Jackie Chan fly backwards to take revenge, wonder at
the rivalry and intrigue, and watch out for ghosts.

With special thanks to VINCENT TAN for translations, interpretations
and research.

Song OfAir, by Merilee Bennett,
is a film almost entirely
constructed of old home-movie
footage shot by the filmmaker’s
father, a Methodist lawyer whose
obsessions were his family, the
cultivation of roses and
meticulous documentation. The
footage used in this film is
remarkable for several reasons. it
is amazingly scratch free, it is a
reminder of just how good
Brisbane looked in the T9505 and
it is tinged everywhere with the
values of that era: Mum hanging
out washing, children playi[...]udents and, above all,
displaying a confidence in the life
of the home which seems now to
have receded into a kind of
myth.

The film begins with a home
movie drama based on a ghost
story. It is full of self-taught
animation tricks and
superimpositions, but the main
thrust of the story involves each
member of the family expressing
fear in the face of the terrible
ghost who wishes to divide and
disrupt the happy family evening;
its finale shows the family
huddled together unified and rid
of the evil spirit.

As Song OfAir unfolds, Bennett
tells of her intense relationship
with a father who could not
physically touch his daughters for
fear of implied sensuality, and the
home movies are revealed as
complete artifice. The children's
lives are filmed, and every detail
of their development is shaped
by the father’s vision, his
assumption that his childr[...]and a junction in their
filmmaking career. (This is
Bennett's first film and in This
Life’s Body is Cantrill’s first
‘narrative’ film to include any
hint of a lived life.)

Both films too lie somewhere
next to, or within, a tradition of
oral history, but the history these
films are representing is once
again not their own creation, but
the apparatus of another:

standards of photography,

framing, conventions of beauty,
posture and representation and,
more so, the whole question of
the person behind the camera.

Spaventapasseri, by Luigi
Acquisto, is simply a knockout,
a Swinburne student film without
any trace of industry mimickry,
which represents a very
Australian instance of cross-
cultural filmmaking. It is in
Italian, with subtitles, set in the
sixties but without any traces of
nostalgia. its basic themes are the
push and pull of family life,
transplanted from Italy to
Australia, and the sense of loss
that that implies, as well as the
value of the family bond.

The grandfather still obsessively
tends his pigs, the family still
upholds the supremacy of work
as an indicator of honour, the
homosexual son is frowned upon
and, when he is called up, it is a
chilling joke that this is a result of
his eagerness to be an Australian
citizen.

Spa ventapasseri

There is a recurring metaphor
of death and renewal in the
companionship between the
grandfather and the grandson, a
sense of inheritance and
continuity in the last scene where
the boy buries the old man in a
routine fashion that rivals any
scene from Kaos, concluding the
film on a folkloric note,
somewhere in Altona.

r[...]ng Aboriginal girls
in Sydney who spend nights on
the town — drinking, dining and
dancing, courtesy of intoxicated
would-be hustlers, whom they
finally strip of cash before
cabbing home, saying, ”|t’s been
a good night out.”

It carefully manoeuvres itself
around the obvious historical
space of black exploitation (ie the
past 200 years) and instead opts
for an intersection between the
first fleet arrivals and the present-
day realities of assimilation. The
former is recreated via the
colonists’ diary entries: women
are clamouring on board the
ships at night to sleep with the
‘captains’ while the diary entries
reflect a fascination with the
exotic that is decidedly paternal
. . . ”l am shocked at the brutal
violence with which the natives
treat their women”, while at the
same time marvelling at their
perfect breasts. Th[...]attempt to ‘blacken’

by holding them over the smoke.
The representation of the
colonists is a sensitive, albeit a
critical one, conveying a
r[...]white long disappeared.
Cut to Kings Cross, 1987. The

tributes of beads and button
necklaces have been replaced
with the great Australian
egalitarian gesture of offering the
woman a smoke. This is where
the film jumps the gun on the
Aboriginal-European debate and
becomes suggestive of a wider
malaise. The myth of the white
seducer is revealed in all its
ugliness and impotence as the
kind of desire that drives men to
search out mail-order Filipino
brides. Roles are reversed, and as
the exploited greets the exploiter,
the girls take these men for a
ride, playing a sophisticated game
with not only the dynamics of
prostitution, but also with a long-
standing tradition of white girls
flocking to the Cross to
’entertain’ foreign sailors. Viewed
from a white perspective, Nice
Coloured Girls leaves you
ultimately with the uncomfortable
feeling that black Australia has
concealed a great deal of pity
and sympathy for our aggressive
culture. As a white woman I wait
for the day when we can project
with confidence an image of
woman like the one we see in
Moffatt’s film, standing on the
beach, her hair blowing in the
wind, an eternal mother and
lover, unchanging and
uncompromising. Sadly, the
white mother would have to be
filmed on be[...]

(Timothy Dalton), a new
Bond movie (The Living
Daylights) and a spate
of books to add to any
Bond-lover’s bookshelf.
SCOTT MURRAY takes
a look at some of the
recent writing about
007, and is shaken and

stirred by what he reads.

half o[...]d.‘

Published in March 1953, Casino Royale was
the first public appearance of James Bond,
secret agent’. The novel, according to
Fleming’s close friend Ivar[...]first books are
wont to do, gave little notice to the publishing
world of the torrential rain of gold gathering

strength over the horizon.’

Fleming soon settled into a ritual of one book
a year, written while on holiday in Jamaica
over the winter. Most were written on a golden
typewriter[...]New
York.

In all, 11 novels and two collections of short
stories followed.‘ Fleming did, at times,
become tired of his Bond obligations, but his
output was fairly consistent, save for the last
novel, which was written when he was ill.

Bond became a film creation in 1962 with
the release of Dr. No. Anne Fleming wrote to
Evelyn Waugh about the film on 2 August
1962:

When we arrived very late at the private cinema
our personal guests . . . were very restive, and I
feared Mrs Crickmere [the Flemings’ cook] might
give notice and no more coconut soup; luckily she
found the film ‘quite gripping’. I wish I had, for
our fortunes depend upon it. There were howls of
laughter when the tarantula walks up James Bond’s
body . ’. . The heroine could not be eaten by crabs,
for though they imported huge land crabs from
Guernsey they died the minute they were placed on
the heroine’s body.’

Apparently, Ian Fleming felt quite out of place
at the screening, so it was not an auspicious
occasion for the Flemings. But fortunes were to
be made.
Seventeen[...]en made‘

and most have been massively popular. The

Bond books have continued to sell, despite
their author’s death in 1964. And to keep up
with the demand for new adventures, both
Kingsley Amis and John Gardn[...]thorised Bond novels.’

As well, there has been the burgeoning
collection of critical and fan works, ranging
from Amis’ The James Bond Dossier to The
Bond Affair‘, edited by Oreste del Buono &
Umberto Eco, from Peter Haining’s James
Band: A Celebration to Bond And Beyond:
The Political Career Of A Popular Hero”, by
Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott. Even a
book of Bond film posters has just been
published.”

The original brief of this two-part article was
to review Bennett and Woollacott’s book.
Certainly the early press reviews were
favourable, including a laudatory one from
Professor Stephen Knight". But I found the
book a major disappointment, its other
reviewers[...]often quite
unconvincing arguments. As a result, the scope
of this article has been widened to include
other books and ideas. If much space is still
devoted to Bond Ana’ Beyond, it is because it
should not go unchallenged.

POPULAR H[...]y have their
origins in a particular work or body of fiction, they
break free from the originating textual conditions
of their existence to achieve a semi-independent
existence . . . Robinson Crusoe and Sherlock
Holmes, for example, although initially merely
fictional characters . . .[,] have since acquired a
cultural life that is all their own . . . The figure of
Bond has assumed a similar significance . . . (p14)

Two questions the authors pose are: Why has
Bond become so popular? and How has Bond
changed in the process?

The traditional explanation for Bond’s
popularity is that his exploits gratify the
reader’s repressed desires and give a vicarious
thrill. As Hugh Gaitskell wrote to Fleming:

The combination of sex, violence, alcohol and — at
intervals — good food and nice clothes is, to one
who lives such a circumscribed a life as[...]s, “We
want to be Bond.” (p38) He continues,

The notion has grown up that wish-fulfilment is
somehow immature and therefore suspect. I can’t
see this myself. I think wish-fulfilment is a
common and normal activity. I find self-adverti[...]equally suspect.
No adult ought to feel adult all the time. (pp44-45)

Amis then remarks that “the works of Homer
are a far more compendious compensation-
manual than those of Mr Fleming”.

Taking a varying view, Bennett and
Woollacott suggest that Bond’s popularity in
England is due to his “ability to co-ordinate
. . . a series of ideological and cultural
concerns that have been enduringly important
in Britain since the 1950s” (p18). These
concerns can be summarised as representations
of:

1. “relations between West and East, . . . be[...]nd political
systems”;

2. “relations between the sexes, particularly with
regard to the construction of images of
masculinity and femininity”; and

3. “nation and nationhood". (p18)

There is no fixed analysis of any of these
points of discussion because Bond is a
“moving sign of the times” (1319). He has also
gone through major transformations from one
medium to another. In other words, there is no
one James Bond; there are many.

THE NOVELS

Fleming saw himself as writing literary
divertissements for “an ‘A’ readership”, a
rather English approach. Many of Britain’s
finest crime writers are significant[...]histicated audience in mind, while perhaps
hoping for a broader one in sales. Notable
examples are Nicholas Blake and Michael
Innes.

Fleming enjoyed the admiration of several
peers: Somerset Maugham, Raymond
Chandler[...]Amis. Chandler has said:

Ian Fleming’s writing is hard, racy, direct, vivid

stuff. A form of writing most suitable for

translation into strip form. I often wish[...]

journalistic mind, for his ability to get the
background details correct. The plots of the
Bond novels may be improbable, but the
accuracy and believability of the settings make
them seem less so.

Fleming was also a witty, referential writer,
who assumed a degree of sophistication on the
part of his reader. There are many allusions to
literary[...]books
at this knowledgeable “A” reader. This

is evident from the jacket designs they
commissioned. Such designs constitute one of the
primary means whereby literary texts are inserted
into available aesthetic and marketing categories

. . . The jacket designs for the first hardback
editions of the early Bond novels . . . consisted of
a collection of objects associated with either
espionage or luxurious living, or both, and
connoted the category of superior quality, ‘literary’
spy fiction. (pp22-23)

Fascinating and convincing — that is, until one
looks at the books.

As one can see, Bennett and Woollacott are
incorrect. And, unfortunately, this inaccuracy
of analysis (or research) is typical of the book.
Their description of the first Pan paperback
editions is just as incorrect (p59).

But whatever 0ne’s view of the cover designs
(and 1 find them rather indeterminately
targeted), the early Flemings were well received
in the daily press and literary journals. Bennett
and Wo[...]r’ who, in being familiar with or

informed, by the reviewer, of the series of literary

and mythic allusions deployed in the novels[,]
would be able to read and appreciate them as
flirtatious, culturally knowing parodies of the spy-
thriller genre. They thus functioned as ‘critical
legitimators’, making the Bond novels permissibly
readable in discounting t[...]m and sexism. (p23)
How bizarre to imagine a pool of likely Bond
readers out there waiting for a book to get an
elephant stamp of cultural approval before they
felt free to read a[...]rally
unsavoury contents. Such a view, 1 suggest, is
not only insupportable but unpleasantly
‘superior’ in tone.

What is clear is that as Bond became more
widely discussed his readership broadened and
changed. Publication in paperback of Casino
Royale (1955) was obviously a major factor, as
was the beginning of the novel serialisations in
the Daily Express (1957).“ Bennett and

Woollacott hypothesise that the Bond

PAPERBACK BOND: The 1985 Pan
edition of Casino Ffoya/e

readership was by now predominantly lower-
middle class (p25).

Much of Bond’s appeal to this class in
Britain, they posit, was the notion of a “pre-
eminently English [actually Scottish‘“] hero,
single-handedly saving the Western World from
threatening catastrophe” (p28). In the 1950s
novels, the villain is usually Russian or in the
employ of SMERSH. This, Bennett and
Woollacott suggest, was[...]irst and foremost, although
not exclusively, as a Cold War hero, an exemplary
representative of the virtues of Western capitalism
triumphing over the evils of Eastern communism.

(D25)

But the tone of the 19505 novels is not anti-
Soviet, nor do they pander to those excited by
a potential West—East conflict. That some of
the villains are Russian is secondary. They are
comic in design and effect, just as are the
numerous non-Russian villains in the other
books. As Eco writes about From Russia, With
Love, the “Soviet men are so monstrous, so
improbably evi[...]omano
Ca1isi’s article, “Myths and History in the Epic
of James Bond”, published in The Bond
Affair. He writes:

it is evident that the West and the Soviet are used
as “real” pretexts for a universal unhistorical
dialectic between Good and Evil. Both one and the
other are so little characterised as to compel the
reader not to take sides for these as representing
Western or Soviet. Unlike a certain sector of
“thriller” American literature, here the
“propagandist” representation of the Soviet (or,
rather, of Soviet espionage: and it is an ulterior
distinction not to be overlooked) does not annoy
anyone. (p78)

In summary, the West-East aspects may have
attracted or appealed to some readers. But
given the comic tone of the novels and the
ways the villains are described”, I seriously
doubt that Cold War connotations were a
major factor in the books’ popularity.

As seen above, the Bond cycle of films began
with Dr. No in 1962. By comparison with the
modest sales of the early novels, the films took
off well and have (mostly) continued to be
extremely profitable. Premiere (US) reports
that the total attendances for the Bond films
now exceeds 1.5 billion“, and the films are still
to be seen in China and the USSR.

An immediate effect of the films’ popularity
was the dramatic boost in sales of the Fleming
novels”, giving him the wealth and notoriety of
which he had dreamed. A more gradual effect
was the transformation of his Bond into a new,
ever-changing popular hero. In the process,
creator and creation became separated.

This separation is mirrored in the changing
main titles of the films. They begin with ‘‘Ian
Fleming’s” overlapping the film’s title (“Dr.
No”, etc.). But with the arrival of Roger
Moore in the role of Bond (Live And Let Die),
the titles change to “Roger Moore as James

Bond 007 in Ian Fleming’s . . .”. Later the
wording became, “Roger Moore as Ian
Fleming’s[...]. .”. Fleming

has been progressively separated from the title
of his novel or short story. And as for the
phrase “James Bond 007”, that is now owned
by the producer.

In part, the changing titles reflect the fact
that the films no longer follow the plots of the
original creations. More important, Fleming is
no longer seen as a principal ingredient; he has
been pushed into the background. Producers
Albert R. Broccoli and, for a while, Harry
Saltzman came to call the shots, and Bond only
became what they allowed him to be.

An immediate change was to replace much
of Bond’s cold-hearted amorality with a
lighter, more sardonic s[...]he

had a snobbishness that he wrote into Bond in the
novels. It was the lack of humour about himself
and his situation which I didn’t like about the

character . . . As to Bond the man, one must
always use the humanity of his character.”

It is intriguing that Connery should want to
change what I suspect many readers liked
about the novels: the non-moralistic
representation of Bond’s toughness. The books
are never hagiographic towards Bond, unlike
the films, and that is part of their intrigue.“
The films’ producers also opted for

SPECTRE as Bond’s arch enemy, rather than
the Soviet SMERSH. Broccoli has said that, in
the period of détente in the early 1960s, he
wanted to de-nationalise the films’ villain so as
to maximise commercially t[...]ett and Woollacott see

Fleming’s exclusive use of SPECTRE, after he

had introduced it in Thunderball (1961), as
evidence of how the films affected his writing.

That Fleming continued to write to this
[SPECTRE] formula is, of course, attributable to
the fact that, after the success of the film of Dr
No, he wrote with a different public in mind a[...]view with Peter Haining:

‘as you know I worked for Reuters in Moscow in

the thirties and I became fascinated by the Russian
secret police who were everywhere. It was[...]n to do his dirty work.

They were OK as villains for a while until

Khruschev closed them down, but always a bit

restricting because being the real thing there was

only so far I could go with[...]fictional
sense. So I invented SPECTRE to give me the
freedom of invention I needed for my more recent
novels.

I see no reason not to trust the author on this.

Another change was the introduction of
gadgets, enormous sets and high—tech effects,
which soon began to crowd the films (the
rocket suit at the start of T hunderball, which
gives Bond almost no practical advantage, was
the precursor of much silliness ahead). Always
concerned about audience reaction, Broccoli
reacted to the avalanche of complaints about
the effects overkill in Moonraker and returned
to basics, albeit briefly, with For Your Eyes
Only.

However, there is little doubt that the sheer
size of the sets and the currency of their
designs are an integral part of the films’
success. Production designer Ken Adam is even
awarded a separate chapter in the Haining
book." But while agreeing that Adam’s early
sets are excellent (Fort Knox, for example),
they became increasingly flimsy in look[...]stical in scope they
began to move Bond’s world from the comic to
the absurd. When Amis complained that the
parodying and joking elements of the films

7' ‘ . r ._ I
r;w' aw” /Q .. in 4.4.2.
LICENSED TO COMMIT HOMICIDE: Sean Connery

destroyed the real mythic power of the Bond
figure as displayed in the books", it is arguable
that the production design should be held
accountable as well.

It is interesting, too, that after Moonraker
Adam was replaced by Peter Lamont who,
with director of photography Alan Hume,
contrived a lush, clean lo[...]they have used existing buildings and locations
(the French stables in A View To A Kill, for
example). Their work, and its effect on the
transformation on Bond to film, is best seen in
For Your Eyes Only.

Casting also had an important effect on how
Bond’s world was transformed to film.
Connery is almost everyone’s favourite screen
Bond, and he is certainly a more physical and
sexual presence than Moore. He is also a much
more convincing actor, reaching a seemingly
effortless peak in Goldfinger and parts of
Thunderball. Connery and his characterisation
of Bond became inseparable. This is something
poor George Lazenby quite singularly failed to
achieve, though he is not helped by the absurd
dubbing during his Sir Hilary Bray scenes.

Bennett and Woollacott also see a change in
the relationship of Bond and M when put on
film,

with Bond being increasingly distinguished from

and constructed in opposition to the films’

portrayal of M as a fuddy-duddy Establishment
figure. (p34)

This, they argue, reflects the freeing up of
attitudes in the ‘swinging’ 1960s. But the
bantering between Bond and M suggests this
“opposition” is relatively superficial. As well,
their relationship is often portrayed
sentimentally, as when Bond puts[...]jesty ’s Secret Service
and Miss Moneypenny has the sense to alter it
to a request for leave. M looks like a puppy
relieved to find his owner isn’t going away
after all. The relationship in the book is much
tougher.

Finally, there is perhaps the most discussed )

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER —— 23

BOND’S CREATOR: Ian Fleming (above). But is it a Rolex Oyster he’s wearing? BOND ON

BOND:[...]RY U.S. BOND: Barry Nelson (below)
appeared in an American TV version of Casino Floyale

( element in the transformation of Bond onto

film: his sexuality and his relationship with the
‘Bond girl’. Bennett and Woollacott write:
Bond and ‘the Bond girl’ embodied a

modernisation of sexuality, representatives of
norms of masculinity and femininity that were

‘swinging free’ from the constraints of the past . . .

The image of ‘the Bond girl’ . . . constituted a
model of adjustment, a condensation of the
attributes of femininity appropriate to the
requirements of the new norms of male sexuality
represented by Bond (p35)

But before examining the ‘Bond girl’ in some
detail (see next issue), it is worth referring here
to Bennett and Woollacott’s chapter on the
transformation of Goldfinger to the screen”. In
examining the results of the process, they
compare the film and novel in terms of
character, plot and narrative organisation.

Unfo[...]a good
start. On pp148-150, they list and discuss the
34 shots of the pre-credits sequence. The
problem is there are 74 shots in the sequence.
The first five shots, for example, they reduce
to two. It certainly is a new approach to
structuralist criticism; one hopes it doesn’t
catch on.

Their reading of the action is, as well, often
superficial or confused. They write that
“Bond’s sexual attractiveness is registered with
a number of . . . women — with the girl of the
pre-credits sequence . . .” (p158). But the
woman (Nadja Reigen) is a villain who is
keeping Bond distracted, by kissing him, while
an assailant approaches from behind. There is
no evidence that she is sexually attracted to
Bond.

What the filmmakers have done is make one

24 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

suspect Bond has gone into the dancer's room
with sexual intent (“unfinished b[...]es, through
watching Bond’s reactions, that she is up to no
good. Her being deflected into the path of the
blow meant for Bond, therefore, is Bond’s way
of rewarding her treachery (and not sheer
callousnes[...]interpret that earlier “unfinished business".

The Bond films may only very rarely be true
to a purist’s reading of Fleming, or even reach
a similar level of intellectual complexity, but
they do have their special pleasures. What they
deserve are critics capable of uncovering and
responding to their own form of textual
richness.

FOOTNOTES

1.
2.

10.

11.

12

13.
14.
15.

16.

17.

Quoted in John Pearson, The Lite Oi‘ Ian Fleming,
Jonathan Cape, London, 1966, p206.

Bond is a secret agent, not a spy as many writers
claim. See discussion in Kingsley Amis, The
James Bond Dossier, Jonathan Cape, London,
1965, pp11-12.

lvar Bryce, You Only Live Once: Memories Of Ian
Fleming, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1975,
p103.

The novels which followed are: Live And Let Die,
1954, Moonraker, 1955, Diamonds Are Forever,
1956, From Russia, With Love, 1957, Dr No,
1958, Goldfinger, 1959, Thunderball, 1961, The
Spy Who Loved Me, 1962, On Her Ma/esly's
Secret Service, 1963, You Only Live Twice, 1964
The Man With The Golden Gun, 1965, all
Jonathan Cape, London The short story
collections are: For Your Eyes Only, 1960,
Octopussy And The Living Daylights, 1966; both
Jonathan Cape.

. Mark Amory (Ed), The Letters Of Anne Fleming,

Collins Harvill, London, 1985, p315.

. Almost all the reviews of and promotional articles

on The Living Daylights (19) refer to it as the
fifteenth Bond film, thus ignoring the two Bond
films not produced by Albert R. Broccoli[...]and Never Say Never Again
(1983), And then there is the television film of
Casino Royale, made by the Columbia
Broadcasting Company in 1954. See Peter[...]ry Nelson played Bond.

Robert Markham (pseudonym for Amis), Colonel
Sun, 1968; John Gardner, Licence Renewed.
1981, For Special Services, 1982, Icebreaker,
1983. Role Of Honour, 1984. Nobody Lives
Forever, 1986, and No[...]n Cape, London

. Oreste del Buono 8 Umberto Eco, The Bond

Affair, Macdonald, London, 1966. Originally[...]ny Bennett and Janet Woollacott, Bond And
Beyond: The Political Career Of A Popular Hero,
Macmillan Education, Basingstoke, 1987 The
book is part of the “Communications and
Culture" series (Executive editors. Stuart Hall and
Paul Weston).

Sally Hibbin, The Official James Bond 007 Movie
Poster Book, Hamlyn, Twickenham, 1987. The
book does not include posters of the two films
made without Broccoli's involvement.

Stephen Knight, “James Bond is the hero ol the
dollar”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July
1987, p47.

The innumerable inaccuracies range from dates
(eg, the authors have Fleming establish Glidrose
Prduction[...]on
credits (eg, they list Woody Allen as director of
Casino Royale) to character names and titles.
Worse, they have a habit of reproducing quoted
passages incorrectly. In the chapter on
Go/dlinger, for instance. they make 10 errors in
the eight short quotes from the book; in one
quote from Arnis, they make seven mistakes. The
result is that they make line prose stylists such as
Flemin[...]ese ‘slips’, while irritating, do not
detract from the book's central sweep, But a
central argument must[...]in Pearson, p304.

Cited in Pearson, p299.

See "The Thriller Business: a verbal exchange
between Sime[...]refereed by
Frederick Sands", Sheldon Lane (Ed), For Bo
Lovers Only, Panther, London, 1965, pp115.
"Ic[...]th
Raymond Chandler", interview by Donald
Gamery, For Bond Lovers Only.

See Bennett and Woollacott, pp24-8, for a fuller
discussion.

Umberto Eco, "The Narrative Structure in
Fleming”, The Bond Affair, p60,

See Eco, The Bond Affair, for a fascinating
analysis.

Prem/ere (US), Ju|y—Au[...]alysis in Bennett and Woollacott, pp:-31-32,

and the fascinating sales chart on pp26—27.
Quoted in Haining, p140-141.

As Adrian Turner points out about the only time
the film Bond shows human fallibility is when he
fails to work out how to defuse Goldfinger's
atomic bomb. See the National Film Theatre
programme for January 1980.

Cited in The Hollywood Reporter, 31 December
1971, and in Bennett and Woollacott, p34.
"The Wizard of Bond: Ken Adam — Production
Designer", l-laining, pp128-134.

Amis is quoted in "The Bond Phenomenon",
Newsweek, 19 April 1965, but the wording used
above lS taken from Bennett and Woollacott,
p144.

Chapter 5, “The Transformations of James
Bond", Bennett and Woollacott, pp143-174,
“Casually he gets her out of the way by flinging
her in the path of the villain.” From a public
address by Houston and cited in Bennett and
Woollacott, p145.

In the next issue, Scott Murray
looks at the Bond women

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person in their absolute opposite image.

j[...]mmakers conformed, I would say that
James Clayden is not your average
filmmaker. Actor, thinker, director,
pai[...]been
manifested in an experimental history. I
get the feeling he has been searching for
the perfect expression and that he will
never be satisfied with what he turns up
— he enjoys the search too much to
relinquish it.

I spend the first halfhour ofthe
interview waiting for him to complete a
sentence. just one itsy-bitsy c[...]pretentious -
just explorative. Like his films.

After watching his latest film, With
Time To Kill, whic[...]ed and performed in, I expect to
meet a mean kind of guy who throws his
head back and laughs maniacally — a sort
ofBrunswick Street Scorsese.

But Clayden is a gentle man, a contrast
to the visual and atmospheric anxiety of
his semi-spoofy, semi—serious film-noirish
thriller. The punchy weirdness ofthe film
is only hinted at in his manner. He does
not pump the air with ideas the way his
characters pump bullets. He talks as ifhe
is painting abstracts.

In I/V2":/z Time 7?) Kill, Clayden plays
Detective Max Clements, the side-kick to
Lieutenant Nick Yates — magnetically
played by Ian Scott. Their mission is to
“rid the town ofits human garbage” and
its ring-leader the ‘laundryman’ (Peter
Green), an evil—doer referred to as “the
phantom spin-dryer’ ’.

Big on action, short on intellectual
debate, the pair wade knee-deep through
a town ofhoods (Falco[...]streets and rain: Melbourne.

Film and city share the same fringe
celebrities: actors and writers like[...]ag-bag
ofhard-bitten and hard-done-by. In a
movie of claustrophobic dimensions, even
the cast list seems an elaborate in-joke. I
ask Clayd[...]ing with him.

Clayden plays with topography. All the
elements of Melbourne are there, but
they are out oforder. It’s a bit like playing
that kids game with a tray of objects.
Somebody takes the tray away and you

I often have the strong desire to see a

have to remember what was on it. I watch
the film and know the city, but nothing is
quite right.

The West Gate Bridge spans the docks
— “the sort of place you could vanish into
another dimension”, a character eats
chips at the dogs and the Coke sign
flickers at dusk. The journey through
slime is tempered by a peculiarly
Melbourne self-mockery. Ian Scott
wonders aloud, “What is singerjanet
Golding reading. . . probably Kafka.”
After a night of slaughter, Detective Yates
groans: “Christ. Now the sun’s come
out.”

A sense of dislocation is pervasive in
Clayden’s work. Ian Scott’s
Chandleresque stream of consciousness
which manages to both confirm and
complicate the seediness is a well-worn
device ofa well-worn but not yet worn[...]ween obj ective
irony and extravagant
celebration of
the genre.

The nostalgic cliches are inverted. The
audience is set up with familiar
expectations but those expectations are
manipulated, twisted, slapped in the face.
Well—known ‘real life’ personalities play
unknown low-life roles. There are lots of
murders, but no blood.

The protagonists shoot their prey the
way Paul Newman shoots pool in The
Hustler, but Scott’s narration, delivered in
a[...]m: Bogart in Raybans workshopping
how to get back the Maltese falcon.

Clayden describes the effect as “a
lightness which is deadly serious’ ’.
I-Iaving multiple deaths but no blood
imposes an ironical edge ‘ ‘about the
whole power and psychology of
suggestion”.

“Things are tragic one m[...]

Clayden is interested in the peculiar
weave ofthe human mind. His previous
films include Corps-e(1982), The
Ventriloquirt (1987) about a traumatised
man who can speak only through his
dummy, and the television drama The
Hour Before My Brother Diet (1986) based on
Danie[...]se are films which, one way or
another, deal with the imbalances of
human minds and the precariousness of
human life. The Hour, which won the
prestigious Canadian Banff award for
television drama this year, dealt with the
final meeting injail between a brother
and sister before the brother is put to
death.

Clayden admired Keene’s play, bu[...]eeded “a shift in reality” to transpose
it to the screen. The claustrophobic
intensity was well captured on film and
according to Clayden “perhaps better
than in the play”.

By heavily editing the play, and
through takes ofup to 10 minutes in
length, Clayden caught the highly
charged emotion ofthe drama. “The play
was very moving but there is a real
strangeness in watching it on stage, as if[...], not actually in a
prison. On film you feel that the
characters physically exist in a world
which is never fully realised in the play.”

In both preoccupation and style, The
Hour Before My Brother Dies is no barrel of
laughs. By contrast, With Time To Kill
seems almost visually drunk. It is never
sloppy, but Clayden clearly relishes the
freedom ofhis own script, his own visual
whims.

Filmed in Super 8 (later blown up), the
effect is a carefully controlled impression
ofhaphazard movement and thought.
Clayden comments that “the way things
are made has to become part ofthe style
and the feeling”. The use ofSuper 8 was
“a deliberate reflection oft[...]entions, Clayden was
determined “to get exactly
what I wanted without
having to consult
anybody”.
He took a part in the
film, initially to

l‘0llll l‘Alll0ll

streets of Melbourne. JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH goes along for the ride.

cover for an actor who dropped out ofthe
project, and found the experience
illuminating: “There’s a feeling o[...]you, it’s very strange. Physically
being inside the frame is interesting in
itself.”

The stylised characterisations in I/Vith
Time To Kill reflect Clayden’s preference
for a “surface type ofperformance’ ’,
which he[...]rtificial
emotionalism does not interfere between
the character and the audience.

Although his film is fast and
sumptuously sinister, Clayden’s films are
not celluloid fast—food. Designed for the
video market and almost certain to be
available on thethe way ofhis commercial
pretentions. He admits that “some people
would see what I do as experimental”, but
maintains that his ambition is “to make
popular films that might be shown in a[...]ng against art-
houses, but I want to make films for the
general public, which don’t exclude
anyone at all.”

But Clayden’s own qualifications speak
for themselves: “l’m still concerned with
being visually viable. You have to battle
with what you’re doing and why you’re
doing it ifyou have any integrity at all.”

This is probably not a philosophy
which dominates the creators ofBeverly
Hzlls Cap 11. Clayden may not want to
“exclude anyone at all” but the fact is you
can’t please all ofthe cinema-goers all of
the time.

It will be interesting to see how
Clayden extends his style in the sequel to
With Time To Kill, tentatively titled K[...]Cummings and to be shot in 35mm
around St Kilda, the sequel will still retain
similarly stylised camer[...]tinues to explore his own
sensibility and give it the visual adrenalin
ofhis latest film, he will not b[...]than
could ever be said in a big one.

Looking at the West Gate Bridge
through the rain, one ofthe characters in
With Time To Kill r[...]fit’s
got a life ofits own, as ifit’s waiting for the

right moment.” The same might be said
of Clayden.

CRUMPLED CRIMEBUSTERS: James Cla[...]

OVERVIEW

Mideo business is big business.

KALINA takes a close look at the market, the
marketing and the comganies that fitting us
everything from $91.-ztfi Paeifie ta n ;i

Your Grave.

STEP INTO any one of the
new-style video supermarkets
that are sprouting around the
place and it’s evident that
access to films is only part of
the story. Shelves are stacked
from top to bottom with
hundreds upon hundreds of
films in plastic boxes,
everything from The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre and
Sesame Street, but po[...]igures and
paraphernalia also abound —
anything from severed hands
to toys and furry dolls. Some
place[...]and food
vending machines, candy bars
and, ready for it, a model train
with television screens set in
front of the wooden benches
the kids sit on. Some have
walls of television monitors
reminiscent of The Man Who
Fell To Earth.

Many might immediately
recognise this as the
heartland of an elaborate

marketing campaign — one
that sim[...]le and community —
and they would not be
wrong. For, ultimately, it
is the marketing of films
in packages that keeps
the industry alive, and
clearly some things,
like pac[...]t seems,
when exploitable and
sensational aspects
of a film can be
highlighted in the
dustjacket design,
even if it is at the
expense of accuracy
or originality.
According to the
cover of Dogs In
Space, this is "the film
they tried to have
banned". Evil Senses,
meantime, featured a
design copied straight from
another film, shamelessly
pronouncing its lineage with
the proclamation “91/2 Times
More Sensuous”!

Yet a consequence of this
business in which the public
is prepared to spend millions
of dollars each year is that it

caters to a very broad range
of filmgoers‘ preferences —
from the Hollywood
blockbuster to the ‘art house’
film, from family type viewing
to exploitation. in principle
and practice Crocodile Dundee
shares equal space in video
shops with a host of totally
different types of film.
Notwithstanding the limitations
of small-screen technology
and ‘casualties’ such[...]hat are
usually dubbed rather than
subtitled, and the handful of
black and white films that
have now been ‘coloured-in’
for video release, the
underlying tenet of the video
industry is that there’s room
for almost everything.

ideally, the marketing swipe
begins well before the film hits
the video store. In the case of
a film that had a theatrical
outing there will already be
some awareness. It is in part
for this reason that it is better
for a film to have played
cinemas first; there is an
unfortunate and often
unwarranted stigma attached
to films not considered ‘good’
enough to be seen on the big
screen. The acquisition of
these rights is a much-
coveted pursuit. Whilst often
this is prescribed by ongoing
contractual agreements —
especially in the case of major
international film producers —
rights are negotiated in the
wheeling and dealing
competitive market place of
various international markets
and festivals.

It has already been widely
suggested that video has
taken on the role of the drive-
in and suburban cinema as an
exhibition ou[...]dustry observer went
so far as to write: “Video is
now the main source of
income for the film industry.”
His finding is based on a
survey by marketing
consultants Touche Ross, that
places home video presales
as the provider of 40 per cent
of a “typical studio produced”
film budget in the UK, 70 per
cent in the US and 30 per
cent in the rest of the world.

a month it then[...]mains
available to customers, and
earning revenue for its
producers, for another seven
years.

Video came to Australia
less than a decade ago, but
we now have one of the
highest rates of video
penetration in the world. Of
Austraiia’s 5.2 million
households, 98.7 per cent
have television sets, and
between 46 and 53 per cent
ofthe boom
would come to an end, this is
the third year that the market
has “leveiled out”, according
to Tony Wells, managing
director of Warner Home
Video, who also says that
every VCR h[...]rage 57 films per year.

So diverse and voracious is
this market that about 1000
films are released each year.
Furthermore, there’s an
increasing number of these
films that will have bypassed
the cinema screen to debut on
video. in recent times, even
films with box-office
drawcards — such as
Crossroads (Ralph Macchio),
Under The Cherry Moon
(Prince), Love Letters (Jamie
Lee Cur[...]y Madigan) and Dream
Lover (Kristy McNichol under
the direction of Alan Pakuia)
— have all gone straight to
video[...]n Adelaide
cinema). While this decision to
bypass the cinema circuit may
be partly based on poor
overseas box-office and
unfavourable audience
reaction, video is also
providing a venue for
independent distributors who
ordinarily might hav[...]inemas. interestingly, there's
also been a couple of films
that have defied the normal
practice of being released on
video after playing thethe score of
films made specifically for the
video and television market.
The hard-core of this tradition
is the exploitation film, a
market which Charles Band
saw for such cult/trash films
as The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre and I Spit On Your
Grave when he established
Media Home Entertainment in
1979. Many of the films now
produced and financed by
Band’s Empir[...]ision have
primarily been video releases,
as have the Dario Argento-
produced horror films Demons
and World Of Horror. in
America, Lorimar has been
steadily pro[...]erry bomb

And Orchids and Second
Serve (based on the life of
tennis player and transsexual
Renee Richards). These are
designed for both TV and
video, but available in
Australia on video first.
Similarly, many of the British
Film Four productions that
were originally intended for
both cinema and television
release are locally av[...]ght yet escape their
intended exhibition avenues.
The distributors are geared
toward monthly release
pa[...]headline’ title will be
accompanied by anywhere
from three to 10 other films.
Whilst the headline film is
generally drawn from the

é_F“_I_I'-EFRS

mainstream, it is not
uncommon to find elsewhere
in the package films that will
have the cineaste and buff
salivating. if you've wanted to
know what’s happened to
Penelope Spheeris’ The Boys
Next Door (aka No Apparent
Motive), Martha Coo|idge’s
The City Girl, two 1984 Larry
Cohen films Special Eff[...]d Alley, or Richard
Marquand’s Until September,
the answer is they’ve sneaked
into video shops.

The distributors are also
cautiously exploring the
numerous possibilities of
video sell-through. They
envisage that the public will
buy and collect recorded
videos if they are priced
accordingly, as is done with
books, records and CDs. The
films available on sell-through
are priced between $20 and
$40. One company at the fore
of sell—through, CEL, has
released some of its collection
of MGM films, whilst Warner
has just made a number of
films from the 1940s and
1950s available. Roadshow’s
foray into collectibles has
included films of such recent
vintage as The Terminator and
Mad Max, as well as Chaplin
films such as Modern Times
and The Great Dictator.

According to Joanna
Simpson, chief executive of
the Video industry
Distributors’ Association, the
industry is currently “aiive
and well”. The association is
closely monitoring a Joint
Parliamentary Select
Committee that is, among
other things, looking at video
censorship. it is widely
believed the committee could
recommend tougher
restrictions on violence.

Censorship is an issue of
some concern to the industry.
Following the debacle of 1984
— when a backlash against
the voluntary system of self-
censorship forced the
Government to introduce a
system of compulsory
censorship — the industry,
according to Simpson,
“abides by the current law
and is very conscious of
acting responsibly". She says
that the association wants to
see the present system and
level of censorship
maintained, as well as
national uniformity. Though all
the states have handed their
jurisdiction to the >

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER — 29

The association has
undertaken a campaign aimed
at telling the public that it
must take responsibility for
censorship. According to
Simpson, censorship
classifications should only
serve as a guide. She
believes that the industry has
received a lot of flak from
various media campaigns, in
which it has been alleged that
video is exposing children to
unsuitable material. She is
sceptical about the
unquantified, yet oft-quoted,
instances of children watching
such material ‘at a friends
p[...]claims have been used
previously as catch phrases of
lobby groups.

Whilst there is no doubt
about video’s unique capacity
to offer the public affordable
access to the widest possible
range of films, the comments
of Jonathan Rosenbaum in
Sight & Sound are helpful in
determining just what ought to
be made of the phenomenon.
"And we stockpile films on
cassette the way that
countries stockpile weapons
or computers stockpile
information, what does this do
to the word-of-mouth
communication we associate
with public forms like theatre
and cinema? The unique
capacity of video is to make
the work mortal and immortal
at the same time, a form ofTHE VIDEO

— a guide to the

CBS-Fox Video

CBS-Fox Video is a joint
international venture between
20th Centur[...]eral
overseas and local
independent distributors. The
company has also taken on
distribution for the current De
Laurentiis entertainment
venture.

Among locally-produced
films CBS—Fox distributes the
Winners series and has
acquired the two new series
from the Australian Children’s
Television Foundation,
Kaboodle and Touch The Sun.

As a result of the deal that
gave 20th Century Fox foreign
theatrical rights to Crocodile
Dundee, excluding the North
American rights held by
Paramount Pictures, the
company has just released the
film, speculating that it might
become the most profitable
video release in Australia yet.[...]eo and has diverse
interests in tape duplication
(The Duplication Centre), film
and video production and post
production (Video Channel,
VTC). Last year, the company
acquired NZ News which
includes Vid-Com,[...]rgest commercial
post—production facility.

CEL is a company at the fore
of sell-through, much of which
is sourced from its catalogue of
MGM films, to which it has
exclusive rights. it h[...]prise, Withnail
& I) and distributes new
releases of MGM/UA
(Poltergeist 2, Running
Scared), Embassy releases and
a number of films stemming
from Britain’s Zenith, whose
productions include
lnsigriificance, Prick Up Your
Ears, Slam Dance and Sid And
Nancy.

CIC-Taft

CIC is the worldwide marketing
arm of Paramount Pictures and
MCA/Universal Studios. ClC-
Taft Video is a joint venture
between CIC, the James
Hardie Group and Taft
Broadcasting of the US. The
company continues to release
many a Paramount
blockbuster, such as the
Beverly Hills Cop films, Top
Gun, Witness and the Indiana
Jones films,

ClC—Taft is not involved in
sell-through though “this
market is being constantly
evaluated".

Crystal Screen
Entertainment

Over the past i8 months a
turnstile of owners has passed
through the doors of Crystal
Screen Entertainment, which
was originally known as Thorn
EMI Screen Entertainment. The
company was bought last year
by Alan Bond, who sold it after
only a few weeks to the
Cannon Group, reportedly
pocketing £50 million profit for
the brief affair. Cannon, it is
generally believed, was far
more interested in the
purchase of Elstree Studios
and British cinema screens
than in the video company it
had also acquired down under.
Around the middle of 1987,
Cannon sold the company,
which by that stage had no
product to release, as Cannon
had sold off part of its
catalogue to relieve its growing
financial woes.

With an eye to ongoing
distribution contracts, the
company now releases a
variety of product from New
World Pictures, ABC Motion
Pictures, Empire Studios and is
very interested in independent
local and New Zealand
productions.

Palace

Palace Home Video is owned
by Tony Zeccola, who also
runs AZ Film Distributors. The
company releases independent
productions, including action-
oriented films (Rage Of

Honour, The Retallator), horror
films (Demons, Silent Night,[...]rs’ such as Can She
Bake A Cherry Pie?, A Flash Of
Green and The Brother From
Another Planet. Palace also
has an extensive collection of
early Merchantllvory films and
owns the Australian and New
Zealand licence to Playboy
Video.

RCA-Columbia-Hoyts

RCA-Columbia Pictures-Hoyts
Video probably has the longest
release schedule, and certainly
the longest name, in the
Australian video industry. it
releases product of Columbia
Pictures, Hoyts Distribution
and, as from the beginning of
1988, Tri-Star, Orion, New
Line, Cannon and other
independents. According to the
company, this represents 30
per cent of the total output of
the Hollywood studios.

The company is deeply
committed to its ‘Silver Screen’
collection which includes many
films from the Columbia library.
It is also involved in sell-

through, as well as music
video.

Seven Keys

Now owned by the Parry
Corporation, Seven Keys
releases films theatrically and
to video. it releases
independent films, as well as
most Kings Road and Samuel
Goldwyn films.

On the forthcoming schedule
is The Big Easy, the Jim
McBride directed New Orleans
cop film with Dennis Quaid,
and Ellen Barkin, and the
controversial Prayer For The
Dying with Mickey Rourke, Bob
Hoskins and Alan Bates.

Roadshow

Roadshow Home Video is a
division of the Village
Roadshow Corporation, and
operates under[...]s: Roadshow, Premiere
and Walt DisneylTouchstone.
The group release a diverse
range of films drawn from
Disney, Touchstone, Lorimar,
New World, Go[...]

numerous independents.

The Premiere arm releases

two films each month, ofte[...]Blood
Simple, Smooth Talk and Letter
To Brezhnev. The company is
very active in sell-through in
the areas of feature film, ‘how-
to’ tapes, cartoon compilations

and the ever-popular Jane
Fonda Workout tapes.

Vestron
A variety of independent

Vestron Video, a division of
Vestron Video Inc. which

Of Wolves, Teen Wolf and
Conan The Destroyer.
Vestron has entered an

product, which[...]Warner, UA and
some Cannon films.

Theatrically, the Warner Bros

films are released through

Village Roadshow. Over the

next months and possibly

years, Warner will release The
Living Daylights, The Witches

Of Eastwick, Empire Of The

Sun (Steven Spielberg), Lethal
Weapon, Full Metal Jacket and

Hanoi Hilton.
The company has just

released a number of Warner
films from the 19403 and 50s
to sell-through, about which the

company is “cautiously
optimistic".

In the past, Police Academy
1 and 2, Rocky IV, Cobra and
Gremlins have provided the

company's most successful
titles.

NDUSTRY

product — covering the action,
horror, drama, children's and
music genres — is handled by

operates offices in 13 countries
and is actively involved in film
production in the US. Amongst
the company's most successful
films are sleepers such as He-
Animator, To Live And Die In
L.A., as well as The Company

agreement to distribute Filmpac

number of locally-made films
such as Kangaroo, High Tide

CREEPSHOW 2: The Great Savini at work

To keep up with the bulk and diversity of films
released onto the video market — some 1000 films
are released eac[...]raries, and
that are likely to be overshadowed on the shelves
behind such better known newcomers as Sta[...]Wild, Crocodile Dundee, ’Round Midnight,
Crimes Of The Heart, The Name Of The Rose and
many, many more . . .

For much the same reason that lt’s nice to have one's
favourite books lining the shelves — and to not have to break
into the library at midnight to check what so-and-so said — it is
now possible to start your own video collection. At prices
designed to make them collectibles (from $24.95 to $39.95),
you can now add to the booty American films of the 1940s and

1950s, such as Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, A Star Is Born .

(restored), Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder, 42nd Street, Cat On
A Hot Tin Roof, Grand Hotel, Intermezzo, Babes In Arms and
Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon. Of a more recent vintage
there's The Pink Panther, The Naked Civil Servant and Santa
Claus The Movie.

TOM SAVINI needs no
introduction for aficionados of
contemporary horror films or
readers of Fangoria, a
magazine devoted to
cinematic violence and gore.
Hailed in Variety for
“trailb|azing in low-budget
mayhem", Savini’s[...]—up work has
been distinguished by being
banned from Australian video
releases. The scalping scene
from Maniac and the flesh-
eating zombies in Day Of The
Dead, for example, did not
escape the censor’s scissors.

Both the man and his art
can be sampled in new
releases Creepshow 2 and
Schizo. He did the special
effects and also stars,
appropriately, as The Creep in
Creepshow 2, the sequel to
the 1982 Creepshow, which
was devised by George
Romero as a homage to
1950s E.C. Comics. This
second instalment is directed
by Michael Gornick from
stories by Stephen King, who
also appears in the film as
The Truck-driver.

Schizo, written and directed
by Ro[...]a gore-fest that
begins with a graphic
nightmare of the axe—murders
of a love-making couple.

Before we get to see the
remake of Back To The
Beach, which has been
released in cinemas in
America, take a trip back to
the Pepsodent smiles of
perennial nerds Frankie
Avalon and Dwayne Hickman
with ‘king of the Bs' director
Norman Taurog in three
milestones of 1960s youth
culture: How To StuffA Wild
Bikini, Dr Goldfoot & The Bikini
Machine and Sergeant
Deadhead.

See where it all began; in
the laboratory of Dr Goldfoot
(Vincent Price), who invents
blond-haired beauty queens
dressed in gold bikinis to lure
the wealthy magnates he
learned about in a financial[...]produces a leather clad,
female judo expert.

In the sixth outing of the
Beach Party Gang, How To
Stuff A Wild Bikini, Frankie is
joined by Annette Funicello,
Mickey Rooney and a mystery
girl who turns out to be a
manifestation of a witch >

CINEMA PAPERS NOVEMBER — 31

32 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

in the cottage of a reposed
school teacher, Jean Travers
(Vanessa Redgrave). in
solving the mystery of John
Morgan's suicide, the film
plots key moments of Travers’
life — her love affair decades
earlier with a World War ll
pilot, her relationship with her
studen[...]with their brief
and ambiguous encounter.
Typical of Hare’s work, the

narrative serves as a vivid
illustration of the woes of
contemporary Britain, a
gloomy vision of
unemployment and middle-
class apathy. Hare’s direction
elicits some excellent
performances from the cast,
which includes Joely
Richardson, the real-life
daughter of Redgrave and
director Tony Richardson,
whose role as the young Jean
Travers is haunting and
mesmeric.

The Australian production
Initiation seems to have
bypassed the theatrical circuit
to debut on video. This light-
weight adventure film centres
on an American teenager
(Rodney Harvey) who comes
to Australia t[...]her (Bruno
Lawrence) and then embarks
on a series of adventures that
a local Aborigine, Kulu (Bobby
Smith), predicts will have fatal
consequences. From the
contrived storylines, one-
dimensional characterisations
and flat dialogue to the
cutaway shots of wildlife and
spectacular landscapes, there
is little to allay the suspicion
that the film was callously
designed to reach the so-
called ‘international audience’.
But who[...]Another locally-made film
due to hit video stores is
Slate, Wyn & Me, which
recently enjoyed a brief
t[...]mon Burke, Martin Sacks
and Sigrid Thornton under the
direction of Don McLennan
(who also did the screenplay
adaptation) and was reviewed
in the last issue of Cinema
Papers.

If you subscribe to the view
posited in a recent Cinema
Papers review that there are
three kinds of movies, the
Dreadful, the Fun and the
Interesting, Empire State
would sit quite comfortably in
the latter category. This
recent British offering (co[...]national and hitherto
unreleased in this country) is
a contemporary thriller set in
the sleazy and corrupt
docklands of London’s
Eastend.

Described in Monthly Film
Bu[...]ipe at Thatcher's
Britain as a last-gasp lunge at
the throat”, it presents a
group of nervous and troubled

ciphers — the hapless
journalist, the opportunistic
‘rent boy’, the heartless
yuppies, the shrewd American
property developer — caught
in the whirlwind of a plan to
gentrify the depressed, though
valuable, docklands. From its
classic 19405 film noir
opening to its dizzy[...]adic
denouements hover, before
being submerged in the
sequences inside the Empire
State. This stylish, neon-lit
nightclub, where the local old-
time wheeler-dealer bets with
the fledgling yuppy his every
possession in a no-holds-
barred slug-fest, boasts a
vivid mural of the Manhattan
skyline which seems to
contain every metaphor the
film strives for.

When it comes to compiling
a bibliography of films about
the world of newspapers, the
1942 Joseph Mankiewicz
production Woman Of The
Year should not be over-
looked. Set in that ‘dark age’
of journalism, only three years
after Cary Grant declared to
Rosalind Russell, “You’re a
newspaper man, Hildy” in His
Girl Friday, Woman Of The
Year cast Katharine Hepburn
as a savvy, political[...]er, who are
forced to question their
expectations of each other
and their careers after they
marry.

George Stevens’ measured,
restrained direction is a boon
to Hepburn’s incandescent
performance. Ironically, given
that this was the first film to
team Hepburn and Tracy, the
script by Ring Lardner Jr and
Michael Kanin digs deeply
into the couple’s emotional
rifts with, in the case of a sub-
plot involving a refugee child,
som[...]

For the past year the film
has not been able to find wide
cinematic release in the
United States. It doesn’t fall
into any particu[...]gers’ bodies are not
violated by sharp objects; the
dead do not walk the earth;
people just melt. Set in the
ugly environment of Lower
Manhattan’s derelict slums,
the film depicts a group of
winos, bums, and other
assorted “street trash”. A
local liquor store owner
discovers a case of 60-year-
old "Viper”, and decides to
make a quick buck.

In the first few minutes of
the film the consequences of
drinking “Viper” become
obvious as an unsuspe[...]dissolves noisily down a
toilet. All that remains of him
is a slime-covered bony hand
hanging onto the toilet chain.
A pathetic symbol of one
man's struggles against
circumstance? No, just an
example of the delightfully
low-brow humour in this low
budget horror epic.

The lives of these "street
trash” are further threatened
by[...]c Noto), a
psychotic Vietnam veteran
and overlord of the local
junkyard where they all live.
He is more than just a parody
of Rambo, he is the
quintessential warrior:
homicidal and pea-brained.
He carries a knife carved from
a human femur, a trick he
picked up back in ’Nam. He
dreams of Viet Cong vampires
eating him alive, not of
rescuing M|As. While other
winos stop passing mot[...]through their
windscreens.

Freddie (Mike Lackey) is
probably the film's good guy,
if a filthy, wise-ass, no-hoper
can be a good guy. He shares
an old car in the junkyard with
his innocent younger brother
Kevin[...]a). They
blame their lot on their father,
who was of course never quite
the same since returning from
Vietnam. This idea of the
Vietnam war being somehow

Wizard Of Oz, The Incredible Meltin I
anti Raiélers Of The Lost Ark have iiafililea in

it — only Street Trash has dared to

go the

whole way. PAUL ASLANIS looks at tléig
in the cult video genre —— the melt meme.

responsible for the
pathological behaviour of
virtually a whole generation is
seen again in the character of
Bill (Bill Chepil), a Vietnam vet
policeman.

Bill is a tough cop sent to
investigate the growing
number of strange melting
deaths. in one scene, after
beating a Mafia hit man into
unconsciousness, he[...]t by
throwing up on him. A cruel
but fair man, in the great
tradition of Eastwood.

in addition to this trashy
plot is a teen romance, a
Mafia restaurateur, a
perverted junkyard owner and
his perverted dog, and
possibly the silliest scene ever
filmed, as Bronson in a light-
hearted moment castrates a
bit player. Something for
everyone.

The special effects by
Jennifer Aspinall (of Toxic
Avenger fame) are
spectacular. Combined wit[...]ve
direction, and a script which
largely consists of a relentless
barrage of expletives, Street
Trash should become the
next cult horror classic.

But perhaps “horror”
is an inadequate A‘
classification of l’

/.5"

I ..

i I - ‘ - §’-57.

STREET TRASH: Melting moments

Street Trash. The characters
are horrible, not horrifying, as
are their messy deaths. This
is what distinguishes Street
Trash from all other horror
films.

For the past 10 years,
horror films have followed
tiresome formulas which, for
the most part have ensured
their enormous success.
Firstly there are the “Slasher”
films. Friday The 13th (now
part 6), and A Nightmare On
Elm Street (now part 3) are
two recent examples of the
dozens of films of this type
available on video. The best
of these attempt to recreate
the tension and terror from
the legendary shower scene
in Psycho. Most fail to rise
above a level of misogyny at
its most brutal. But the victims
in Street Trash are not
vulnerable teenag[...]ou say “yeuch".
Secondly, there have been
films of the alien/zombie
variety, such as Evil Dead,
Reanimator, etc. All of these
films rely heavily on their
special effects to revolt, and
therefore entertain the
audience. Gallons of blood,
decapitations, and
disembowelments are the real
stars of these films.
Xenophobic, reprehensible,
and just plain stupid,
zombie/alien films have
glorified the mutilation of the
human form in every
conceivable manner. Street
Trash, however, offers little in
realism as far as melting is
concerned: anatomical reality
has been disregarded in
favour of abstract
expressionism in latex.
Reworkings of old themes

make up the bulk of the rest
of the horror genre. Vampires,
demons, werewolves and
malevolent spirits abound.
Some new special effects, but
the same old story of good
versus evil in one form or
another. No such[...]ists in Street Trash
— only scum versus scum in
the moral vacuum of this
nauseating extravaganza. It is
a unique exploitation film,
hilariously tr[...]

instead, we take our cue from
two recent articles by Ross Harley,3
both advocating a kind of return to
more conventional, although not

conservative, notions of film
criticism, ones that take into
account "particular films and their
relation to the histories of their
form”, and the current, very
tangible, forces which inform such
criticism — cinephilia, popular
culture, obsessions with the
personal. We want to make it clear
that we intend to steer away from
the ‘post modernist’ artisan stance
and unashamed[...]we
hope, an auteurist line3 in order to
demystify the secrets of narrative
film, and expose and trace such
old-fas[...]good strategy now, as
Super 8's ongoing strength is

34 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

'-‘LEASE CHQQ
CAREFU|_LysE

largely due to the proliferation of
auteurist filmmakers, and at least
half of the Australian films in this
festival were from established or
emerging Super8 auteurs.

The films of Bill Mousoulis are,
for many of his critics, a little too
local — suburban, ver[...]ho lead routine, banal
lives totally based around the idea
of the family home — and not
particularly dynamic on a[...]there
are no hybrids at work here which
may place the films in the Lynch
basket. Faith, his latest and to date
his best, is the last in a trilogy
(following Back To Nature — a[...]about young romance)
which thematically fablises what
you could call ordinary experience
— love, memory, destiny and its
metaphysical counterparts in the
‘external’ world. Faith more or less
follows[...]ut family, marriage and
responsibility, but there is no sure-
fire way of defining the characters’
relationships by the narrative
which the film sets up. Instead,
Faith could be read by its[...]not to mention its
eloquent ellipses in time —- the
couple together in front of the TV,
the wife later alone on the same
couch. The film manages to
maintain this in typical Mousoulis
style, with an almost complete
absence of dialogue. The

characters, in the style of true
Bressonian tragedy, follow pre-
ordained destinies, actions and
responses, but their divine path is
not marked out so clearly, and
every mundane activity — baking
cakes, watching TV. going to work,
caring for the baby — defines a
wider view, that life revolves[...]rie Mieville’s short Faire La Fete
(screened at the Sydney and
Melbourne film festivals), Faith is
part of this very small cinema of
eternal digression. Mieville’s film
too hinges on a superlative play of
emotive gestures, schizophrenic
moments of happiness, sorrow,
maternalism, childlikeness, wh[...]s rest on a
young migrant child and his
mother in the window of a flat
across the street. She is pulled
inside by her lover, who persists in
his demands for a child to fulfil
their relationship. ironically, but
not illogically, she resists. The same
polarity of desire exists in Faith;
between that which we externalise
as the ideal and that which,
through human frailty and social
obligation, makes us prisoner of
our own personal obsessions.
Another film that pu[...]t

on a limb in its precarious narrative
concerns is i\lobody’s Home, by
Denise Lloyd and Richard Pe[...]eenagers are united by a
mutual loss or rejection of
immediate family and a general
disillusionment with life. They form
a family unit of their own which is
ultimately broken down by outside
forces. Using some beautifully
emotive close-ups of the
characters’ faces, the film follows
the group through back alleys and
squats in their search for ’a better
place’. Particularly poignant is a
long scene on a wintry beach
where, to the tune of the
Eurogliders’ Heaven (in any other
film you’d laugh), the three frolic
in a very temporary, joyful
freedom. it is a short-lived
happiness, however, as one of the
characters is subsequently arrested
for car theft, and the other two
finally just wander away down a
lane. Despite a few rough edges,

Nobody’s Home is extremely
engaging in its honesty and
simplicity. Based on the real life
experiences of its writer/co-
director, it has an authenticity in
script and performance that is
rarely achieved in Super 8
narratives.

We doubt if anyone working in
Super 8 or otherwise could match
the ingenuity of Chris Windmi|l’s
Congratulations Cazellehead. O[...]cks with story or
representations —- everything is
perfectly believable. However,
suddenly and fairl[...]strange things happen. A woman
spends all day in the dressing room
continually changing outfits and
doing the ‘dead ant dance’ of high
school fame — lie on your back
and wriggle your arms and legs in
the air. The boutique girls become
rather unnerved — one wet[...]s her boyfriend ’Foxhead’
(whose only concern is for the
beach and his mates) for help. It's
eventually revealed that the
woman in the dressing room is a
cook to an aristocratic lady, who
often goes on spending sprees at
her employer's expense. In the end

Auto-portrait

Another avant-garde genre that

goes back (at least) to the sixties in
Australia is the diary film. This type
of autobiographical work has been
enjoying something of a comeback
recently among some of the older
16mm avant-gardists — in This
Life's Body[...]tory gives
it a special relationship to this type
of work, and some of the best films
in the festival were of this genre.

in Fiona Trigg’s Robin's Mouth, a
strange case of mistaken identity
prompts the filmmaker to re-

l:_\“‘ . .

-urn-nasianuasn.-su_a:wcr

RILEY look at the work presented at tee I

examine a particular per[...]arisons and
contrasts with her current situation.
The soul-searching comes to an
abrupt halt, however,[...]to return to a prior
preoccupation — observing the
household insects. Although the
film refers lightly to the illusory
nature of memory and perception,
its most interesting aspect is its
refreshingly quirky obsession with
incidents that (not unlike the
movements of insects), seem to
have no important significance, but
which make up a good part of the
fabric of life.

Auto-Portrait by Simon Cooper is
another film through which its
maker attempts to[...]history. Displaying a
parallel concern with ways of
creating stories and meaning, the
film moves along a variety of lines
from formal narrative through
‘straight’ autobiography (old stills,
bits of old films) to the anti-
aesthetic realism of the filmmaker’s
visions of the surrounding
landscape. Its approach to
autobiography is deliberately open-
ended. As the quote in its synopsis
says, "Time . . . won't tak[...]get a map
and search.” Showing little faith in
the power or ‘truth’ of overly
determined ‘original’ images, this
fil[...]umulated randomly (fatefully?)
over time, looking for meaning
after the filming rather than before,
and attempting to allow the film to
create its own portrait of him.

This is not the comprehensive
overview we might have arrived at
using another approach. We’ve
had to pass over a lot of work we
would have liked to talk about. But
for the sake of more considered
views of individual films and
filmmakers, that will all just have to
wait for another time and place,
another festival.

FOOTNOTES

1, Adrian Martin, “The Legend of Billy
Jean", Filmnews, August 1987.

2. "Theof "Gulfstream” (the
Super 8 program at the Sydney Film
Festival). published in Filmvi[...]

aymond Durgnat makes distinct
Bfour main streams of screen
acting in his Eros In The

Cinema: the expressionistic, the
theatrical, the realistic, and the
persona style — or, what he also
terms the “strictly Brand X”. We do
not really need to hazard too much of
a guess to claim Madonna as Brand X
material. But having said this, I feel
we may be caught in some sort of i
double dilemma. On the one hand, in
the face of Madonna’s most recent
screen appearances, there’s the
vague and desperate feeling that
something has been closed off. On the
other hand, we may well ask, does it
not seem presumptuous to attempt an
appraisal of Madonna’s screen
presence on the strength (or
weakness) of only three commercial
films?

Maybe not. At this point, I am
reminded of James Dean, who
acquired the X quality only after his
death and in the space of two films or
less. Brand X appears to be that
something which grabs the public’s v
attention regardless of output. And
yet we cannot claim the benefit of
hindsight for Madonna as we could for
Dean; understanding as well that the
mystique that is Dean would probably
not loom so large were it not for an
early death.

There are two things to consider
here. The first is some definition of
the anonymity, X. Elsewhere, Durgnat, 4
along with John Kobal, elaborates on
the peculiar X quality as “always
some flashpoint of emotional affinity,
some resonance with the longings and
experience of the audience”. Like
Roberta’s penchant for the word
“desperate” in Desperately Seeking
Susan, I’ve taken a liking to the word
“fIashpoint”. It means that a mere
gestu[...]peculiar manner — in no more than
a few seconds of screen time — is all
that is necessary for an avalanche of
emotions to overwhelm a spectator,
and it's an experience which will
persist after the fact. The second
thing to consider is that Madonna is a
figure whose creation and whose
artistic province is not one set out

CAPUTO lo[...]01" PROMISE

E exclusively within a given number of
films. The significance of the latter is
not to be taken lightly: the extent to
which it is understood will determine
the success or failure of her screen
appearances.

Let us rewind to somewhere in
1986. Essentially, it’s what I see as
more or less the mid-way point
between her ascension to tame (the
Boy Toy period) and the place where
she is situated today (the classic,
mature woman). In recapping, it can
be characterised as the calm after the
storm. The whirlwind of publicity
which met her marriage to Sean Penn

. — which included reports of Penn's
attacks on the press and the much
sensationalised nude pics in
Penthouse and P[...]Surprise, with Penn
alongside, was to prove more of a
thud than the anticipated
thunderstorm. But the release of a
new album, True Blue, was pre-
eminent. And with it something
happened.

Earlier in the year, taking her
marriage as a crucial marker, the
words “Madonna Louise Veronica
Ciccone entered a new phase of life
this summer”, opened the introduction
to Harry Dean Stanton’s interview for
Interview. I mention this only because
it anticipates something, which is
now, but which also goes with the old
Madonna. There’s certainly something
indeterminate about Stanton’s
interview; the phase isn't complete.
By June, however, Rolling Stone I
carried Madonna on the cover with
the headline, “The New Madonna”,
and not only does it announce

, something new, it shows something

i new. Gone are the long waves of hair,
the unmistakable crucifixes, the
glitter of bracelets, belts and chains,
the Boy Toy accoutrements, and with
them supposedly had gone the
virginlwhore label that has become
her epitaph. No doubt, there's a new
femininity discovered. Soon after,
Vanity Fair celebrates the same with
“Lady Madonna: A Change of Face”.

What separates the old from the
new Madonna is that the old draws

more toward what we could call a
‘philosophy’ than anything else; while
the new is more of a look, comparable
to that of the classic movie idol. Her
beauty and her physique have become
central to who Madonna is. She has
been compared to the likes of Monroe,
carole Lombard and Grace Kelly, and
only lately to Katharine Hepburn. If
the latter comparison seems weird, it
is also easily understandable given
that Shanghai surprise has been
noted for its similarity to The African
Queen, while her latest film, Who's
That Girl?, is a sour remake of
Bringing Up Baby.

But it's around this point tha[...]to films which
follow Desperately Seeking Susan, for
this concern with her beauty and her
physique is one which is at variance
with her later films. As Leo Braudry[...]yer in Stars)
points out: “Without an awareness of
the aesthetic weight of a film star's
accumulated image, a director can
easily make mistakes that destroy the
unity of his film.” Braudry could easily
have been makin[...]raudry's sense, it's not
exactly a miscalculation of Madonna’s
image that's really at issue here, for,
indeed, what we do see is an aspect
of her persona played out. Instead, it
would be more precise to say that the
film has overcalculated.

In Desperately seeking[...]its her character Susan like
a glove, not because the film is
creating a star but because it knows
an already discovered one: the
Madonna of the music industry, the
Boy Toy, the goodlbad, virginlwhore
personality. It seems to b[...]hat Madonna should do no more than
linger through the film with that
indefinite X quality of a movie idol.
The rest is up to someone else. Thus,
the undeniable and pervasive sense
that the film is dealing with a
spectator’s extraordinary fixation on a
movie star: trailing her, touching the
things she touches, buying her black
and gold iacket (hence the

significance of selling and buying the
iacket on the grounds that it belongs
to someone famous, Elvis or Jim
Hendrix), and eventually becoming
her.

What’s wrong with Who's That Girl?
It's obvious that Who’s That Girl? is
posing a question to do as much with
Madonna as i[...]can cloak
her character in similar terms to
those of Susan — streetwlse but
adorable, rebellious but with good
intentions. American Film describes
her character simply as, “Nikki's bad,
but not that bad”. No doubt, we are
back with the goodlbad girl,
virginlwhore label. The problem with
Who's That Girl? is that it's not
dealing with Madonna as X material,[...]doesn’t resonate anywhere else. At
two removes from Desperately
seeking Susan, it's constantly
replaying the notion of the goodlbad
girl type; it’s overcalculated and it’s
replaying Madonna as a caricature of
Madonna, which works to wash away
the instances of the X personality, and
leave very little for the imagination. .
The title as question performs a
decidedly disingenuous
ingenuousness.

I want to return to the June 1986
cover of Rolling Stone. Madonna’s hair
is short, blonde and Avant-style. Her
attire isn’t any longer a composite of
different pieces, but a simple black
dress, off the shoulder. Her right hand
graces her shoulder and[...]called
Boys’ Night Out. It’s a symbol — in the
film — of _N_ovak's purity in the face of
certain compromising situations. so
what's Madonna doing with it? It's L

_ '”easy. Her change in 1986 was Iier new

purity, a new innocence all the more

-' ,. innocent. She is forever a virgin. I '

- think this is what has been"sa‘¢lIy
missed by Who’s That Girl?[...]say virgin, like in
my song, .l’m not thinking of

OHope And Glory

oThe Lighthorsemen
ORunning From The Guns
OShe’s Gotta Have It
OSummer

0The Untouchables

0 HOPE AND GLORY

1987 has proved a very good year for
cinematic nostalgia. Not only has there
been a lot of it but the quality has been
superior. In their disparate way[...]4 Clzaring Crow Road, Peggie Sue
Got /\/Iarrierl, The Tin Men, Hootiers and
Radio Days have all engaged in the
remembrance of things past and, in one
way or other, achieved an[...]l. And now
Hope And Glory, a surprising departure
for director john Boorman, joins their
ranks.

Like all the films above, Hope And
Glory has the look and sound ofits period
and place — England in World War II
— superbly right. Like Radio Days, it
offers essentially a child’s-eye-view of a
vanished world, bringing us to the verge
of nostalgic indulgence time and again,
then at the crucial moment undercutting
this tendency with comedy or a severer
truth.

The film is marvellously evocative of
time and place, immaculate in its
observation of the outbreak of war, of
London in the blitz, of evacuee trains, of
beaches fenced off with coils of barbed
wire, the well—known voices of political
leaders and starnmering king on the
radio. All of this has, of course, been
done before, but not often with such wit
and demystifying seriousness. And a
good deal of its effect is due to its use of
Bill Rohan (Sebastian Rice—Edwards),
the sharp-eyed, imaginative child who
stands in for the young john Boorman.

War is the greatest fun for young Bill
who protests to his mother against
evacuation with “l’m gonna miss the
war and it’s all your fault.” He doesn’t,
however, and he and his gang prowl the
rubble of bombed suburbia, night-
marishly lit to recall the waste land of
Paul Nash’s “The Menin Road”,
acting out war—time cliches (“We have
ways of making you talk”) and learning
about sex (an orderly inspection of what
is concealed by the bloomers of a girl
called Pauline) and death (Pauline’s
mum is killed one night).

So, it is not a war film but a film
about coping with war. For Bill and his
friends, indeed for everyone, there is a
heightened excitement that goes along
with the anxieties, a sense of ceaseless
activity and movement that has shaken
up the lower-middle-class suburb. But
what accounts for so much of the film’s
pleasure is not so much the careful re-
construction of the period as the un-
expectedness of some of its observation.

Bill’s mother, Grace (Sarah Miles),
finds that, when her husband goes off
(“typing for victory” in a clericaljob, as

he says), she li[...]iend Mollie (Susan Wooldridge,
Daphne in jewel In The Crown) goes off
with a Polish pilot, leaving the husband
who confesses to having loved Grace but
has been too poor in the Depression to
think of marrying. Bill’s teenage sister
Dawn (Sammi. Da[...]g
Canadian corporal (Jean-Marc Barr)
but, instead of falling lyrically in love
with him, finds she wants him with
sexual urgency. The solemnity of the
Kings Speech on Christmas Day is
undercut by Bill’s drunken Grandpa
(Ian Bannen) reeling off a list of floozies
he has known.

All this is given coherence by Bill’s
watchful attempts to make sense ofthe arcane mysteries
of the googly passed on to Bill by his
father at the outbreak of war “in case
anything happens to me”, is a source of
continuing solace in the boy’s world so
lovingly and unsentimentally recreated
in the film.

When the Rohan house is hit and the
family is forced to move in with Grace’s
parents in the Thames Valley, the film
assumes the look of childhood idyll.
While the ridiculous old Grandpa com-
plains of “Too many women in my
family, all hens and no cocks”, Bill and
his younger sister explore a wonderland
of river and summer green. But even
this idyll is laced with farce and tensions.

As Churchill announces “the end of
the beginning” on the radio, the river-
side greenery is just touched with
autumnal gold. Ah, one thinks, a rites-
of-passage movie, but the nostalgia for
childhood itself is recognised for what it
is. Childhood is seen as a time of incom-
plete understanding and the film is wry
and tough enough to see that adults
mostly botch things as well.

Hope And Glory resonates with echoes
of other films. One recalls those Holly-
wood England films of the 19405 in
which Britain was seen as moving
towards[...]com-
munity spirit replacing old divisions.
There is an air-raid shelter sequence
which recalls Mrs Miniver where the little
ones had Alice In Wonderland read to
them: here, the shelter is so dankly repul-
sive no one can bear to go into it. There
IS even a German pilot rounded up in a
suburban allo[...]ur in similar
circumstances. And there are echoes of

But Ho/7eAna’ Glory is both funnier and
more affecting than any of these, largely
because (for the most part) it keeps Bill
at its centre, and because of its tonal
delicacy. “In all my life nothing has
ever matched the pure joy of that
moment”, says the mature Bill’s voice
on the soundtrack. This tremulous pro-
nouncement is not the result of some
deep spiritual experience: it is the child’s
heartfelt response to the bombing of his
school. “Thank you, Adolph”, shouts
one of the little boys on this occasion in
which the tone of the film is so beauti-
fully epitomised. Nostalgia is not often
so much fun.

Brian McFarlane

HOPE AND[...]oorman. Co-producer: Michael Dryhurst. Direc-
tor of photography: Philippe Flousselot. Editor: Ian
Cra[...]t Britain. 1987.

OSUMMER

Eric Rohmer’s Summer is a journey. Not
only for the film’s protagonist but for the
filmmaker himself — a voyage back, a
return to the earliest influences on his
now inimitable style.

Originally titled Le Rayon Vert,
literally The Green Ray, Summer is
loosely based on, and takes for its
premise, Jules Verne’s novel of the same
name. It opens, however, not as one
might expect with a quote from the
novel, but with a single line from the
19th century French poet Rimbaud —
“Ah, for the days that set our hearts
ablaze”; it’s this that provides a key to
understanding the formal and stylistic
aspects of the film. The hearts surely
belong to the French New Wave move-
ment of the sixties (of which Rohmer
was a principal founder) and the days
must be those of Italian Neorealism: the
Rossellini of Stromboli and Vzaggzo In
Italia; the De Sica of Bicycle Thieves; and
among Rohmer’s own films,[...]59.

That a filmmaker considered by
many to be at the forefront of his art
should return for inspiration to his roots
may seem a paradox, but then Rohmer
the classicist has always believed that the
only way to advance in art is to maintain
close ties with the past. It is as if

Rohmer, at 65 and surely reaching the
end of his filmmaking career, has
decided to return to the origins of his
cinematic aesthetic.

What appealed to Rohmer and his
colleagues in the New Wave, and what
was ultimately to liberate a whole
generation of directors from the stifling
European tradition of “quality”, was
the Neorealist spontaneity of approach.
Born of economic and political necessity,
it produced a freshness which was
evident from the first frame, as is the
case with this magnificent film.

Shooting fast, in natural light on
16mm film, with no script (90 per cent
of the dialogue was improvised by the
actors themselves) and no precise loca-
tions worked out in advance, Rohmer’s
fluid yet probing camera is given the full
freedom offlight. Rohmer describes it as
a “film de vacances” and with a crew of
only three (all women under 25) along
with his protagonist, Delphine (Marie

Riviere) he sets offin search of the green
ray.

An archetypal Rohmerian heroine —
young, attractive and vulnerable —
Delphine is at a loose end for her
summer holidays. Her fiance jean-
Pierre has left her and a planned trip to
Greece has been cancelled at the last
minute. Despite invitations from her
family to a camping trip in Scotland and
encouragement from her friends to join
a group, she decides, against[...]irst to
Cherbourg, then back to Paris, then on
to the Swiss Alps and finally to Biarritz
on the Atlantic coast. It’s here that she
overhears a conversation about Verne’s
novel and the existence of the green ray,
and it’s this which drives the film to its
conclusion. According to Verne, if one
closely observes the sun setting over the
ocean, one may be lucky enough to wit-
ness a curious meteorological pheno-
menon. just as the top of the sun sinks )

ROHMER WITH A VIEW: Marie Hiv[...]

green light and, to those who see it, their
innermost thoughts and those of others
around them are magically revealed.

It’s a perfect premise for Rohmer,
who always believed the camera, or
more precisely the cinema, to be capable
of near magical revelations. In Summer,
as in all his films, the actors never give
the impression of performing in front of
the camera — it is simply there, almost
unwittingly, in front of the actors. lt
waits patiently (without the trickery of
complex editing) passively observing the
action until, in a flash of recognition,
true characters are revealed.

But in this film there is no real action
to speak of, nothing really happens; it’s
the anticipation which interests Rohmer
and what distinguishes his films from 90
per cent of current alternatives is his
interest in what people feel and think
rather than what they do. His characters
have real not just celluloid souls and,
finally, the courage of their convictions.
Delphine’s behaviour is not imposed on
her by the necessities of plot or dramatic
development. Rather, she regains the
power, as we do in life, to shape her own
destiny. The narrative, when viewed as
a whole, seems to contain its own
internal logic rather than one imposed
on it by the dictates of conventional
dramatic structure.

If Rohmer is a classicist, he is also a
realist. It’s the complex interrelation-
ships between time, place and sound
which anchor films that otherwise might
have the lightness of a fairytale. We feel

40 — NOVEMBER CINEMA PAPERS

the approaching chill of late afternoon
and we hear the sounds of summer holi-
days. The wind rustles the leaves, an
aeroplane takes off in the distance and
dialogue is interrupted by children play-
ing on the beach. It is the perfect
balance of the oppositional forces of
fiction and documentary which gives
this film its power.

Summer, which won the Golden Lion
at the 1986 Venice Festival, is the fifth in
Rohmer’s series of “Comedies and
Proverbs” but it marks a significant
shift in direction and may be the most
revealing of his concerns. According to
Rohmer it was the success of Full Moon
In Paris which drove him back to the
more purposefully amateur techniques
of Summer. “Success”, he believes, is an
“obstruction to creativity”. It is only by
remaining outside the mainstream, by
making low budget films (Summer cost
less than $1 million) which don’t rely on
mass appeal for financial viability, that
he believes he can rema[...]~
garel Menegoz. Screenplay: Eric Rohmer Director of
photography. Sophie Maintigneux. MUSIC’ J6afl~[...]es) Production company: Les
Films du Losange with the co-operation of the French
Ministry of Culture and P.T T. Distributor: Filmpac.
16mm/35m[...]. i986.

OTHE
UGHTHORSEMEN

So much has gone into The Lig/zt/zorsemen
that you feel a little guilty in[...]m saying, all those uniforms,
$10.5 million worth of magnificent
equestrian charges, a Beersheba and a
wilderness carved from the Bush . . .
and you’re not happy with the story?

Well, of course, there is a story. The
broad, sweeping story of what became
the last great cavalry charge in the
history of modern warfare. It was
towards the end of World War 1. Eight
hundred young Australian Lighthor[...]ommanded to charge across five kilo-
metres or so of open desert into a town
guarded by machinegun emp[...]task with honour and
remarkably few casualties.

For such magnificent moments, we
need a David Lean. The picture is grand
and the canvas wide. A Lean can swirl
the cinematic brush around and still
delve in to pain[...]ch, cer-
tainly deliver that bigger landscape. It is
when we look at the people in close-up
that their work tends to blur,[...]n to
cliches, superficiality and predictability.

The failings of The Lig/zthorsemen leave

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Signat[...]

No. 15 (January 1978): Tom
Conan. Francois Truffaut. John
Faulkner. Stephen Wallace. the
Taviani brothers. Srl Lankan
cinema. The lnlsnrnan. The Chan!
01’ Jirnrnie alacitsrriitn.

No. 17 (Augu[...]lo Hupperr. Brian
May, Polish cinema. Neiislronr.
The Night 7770 Prowler.