In Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche duBois fishes around for some bourbon to kill her jitters and pulls up with a bottle labeled "Southern Cheer." "How can that be?" she quips under her breath. You said it, Blanche--Southern gloom is the Williams world view, and you can fill yourself with three hours of it now at the Orson Welles.
Streetcar remains classic, not so much for the vehicles provided in Blanche and Stanley Kowalski, but for the way Vivian Leigh and Marlon Brando take personal possession of them. Only Leigh could have pulled off all those "I don't want realism, I want magic" lines with such charm. And Brando, in his first major role, delivers a lecture on the Napoleonic Code itself worth the price of admission. Neither role is burdened with too much realism; but, like Blanche, Williams works best with magic and myth. Or, to cop another duBois-ism, "50 per cent of this film's charm is illusion." If you haven't yet, see it.
A more dutiful leap toward modern realism takes place in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and falls a bit off-balance. Williams actually meant Paul Newman's character, the football star on the skids, to be haunted by his betrayal of a male lover (here, a male friend). They had to gloss over all the hints in this version, but Newman does well with the toothless make-shift. Elizabeth Taylor doesn't deliver the performance I expected from the legend, but those fond remembrances may have hailed back mostly to her more svelte youth. And both actors have to do running battle with a perverse Williams creation: the improbably dumb brother and his wife, with their five florid brats--made all the more unbearable by the wonders of film close-up. This one needs the teeth back.
Only in a place like Cambridge can a theater keep bringing back a film like Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The Hollywood sharpies who financed it nearly walked out on the rushes. They should have let it all seep in instead, because one doesn't throw words around in calling this movie "haunting." The look and feel of a real old West mining town are both perfect, from Warren Beaty's cowardly lion of a gunslinger to the orientals segregated across the tracks. And if you don't understand why it moves so lethargically in spots--many of my friends disliked it for this reason--link up the slow editing with Julie Christie's daily trips to the houka. This little Altman touch alone will keep McCabe around these parts for a good while.
If you happen to trip out to Central Square meanwhile, check out Survive, for some gut-dropping suspense; or to Boston, see Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, for more artsy poignancy. Then there's the Russian scifi film Solaris. A friend told me this movie has "a lot of connotations; I didn't even like it until afterwards, when I spent all night with friends making all the connections." One of those. I guess I'll have to go investigate those connotations for myself and get back to you.
SCIENCE CENTER C
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Summer School Film Series, Friday and Saturday, 7:30 and 10:00.
BRATTLE
The Earrings of Madame De, 6 and 9:50, and Lola Montes, 7:50.
CENTRAL SQUARE I
Hard Day's Night, 8:30 and Snow White, 7 and 10.
CENTRAL SQUARE II
Survive, 7:30 and 9.
GALERIA
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, 2:20, 4:40, 7 and 9:20.
HARVARD SQUARE
Little Big Man, noon, 5 and 10:05, and All the President's Men, 2:35 and 7:45.
ORSON WELLES I
The Lady Vanishes, 4, 7:15 and 10, and The Thirty-Nine Steps, 5:45 and 9.
ORSON WELLES II
McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 5:45 and 9:40 and Walkabout, 4 and 7:45.
ORSON WELLES III
A Streetcar Named Desire, 4 and 8:10, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 6:10 and 10:15.
BACK BAY SCREENING ROOM (Boston)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 4:45, 6:30, 8:15 and 10.
CHARLES CINEMA (Boston)
Solaris, 2:30, 4:50, 7:20 and 9:45.
