The boisterous provincial cities of Turin and Catania in The Seduction of Mimi, with their bossist politics and over-blown romantic intriques, provide the first, and the best, showcase for the talents of Lina Wertmuller. Her fluky--sometimes maudlin, sometimes racy--rhythm and pacing, the continual yak-yakking of her argumentative protagonists, even her crude flights of comical fancy all seem to fit in these cities. Here adults must act fast and foolishly in order to sustain the belief that their fierce chauvinism, mafioso loyalty and marital code of honor still mean anything in their industrialized, bureaucratized world.
This precarious life seems just right for Giancarlo Gianninni's face. His pout--pained, bewildered, yet still bemused--expresses perfectly the exasperation of a would-be romantic with nothing but compromised causes to champion. And when Gianninni beds with a town official's voluminous wife to repay her husband for cuckolding him, even the eyefull of female rear end Wertmuller gives us--sexist as it is--manages to drive home its grotesque point amidst this old order gone modern and absurd.
These same elements fly out of hand, and for the most part into bad taste, in Wertmuller's All Screwed Up, a story of two happy-go-lucky working men who fall in with a band of greedy, manipulative working class women who operate a boarding house. Before getting too enthusiastic about Wertmuller, see this film: the characters are one-sided, the construction is sloppy and the ultimate lesson to be drawn would have appeared simplistic if Wert-muller hadn't lost it along the way.
All Screwed Up does have a few clever scenes: during one in particular a worker finally makes love to his reluctant bride when, in the midst of his hot pursuit, a television falls and she has to thrust her arms defenselessly behind her head to keep the set from smashing. Even this bit may upset some, and the over-all tenor of the film is probably exemplified better by a bizarre "dance" of beef carcasses in a slaughter house, done to an operatic score. The entire image suggests Wertmuller's perverse opinion of her characters, and it certainly shows the possibilities of fervid imagination pitted it now seems clear after five features, against an all but non-existent sense of discrimination.
On the face of it, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris promises a Russian version of Star Trek. Russian physicist, Gibaryan, a psychologist and "solarist" to determine what has made over 80 scientists desert or die aboard the space-ship Solaris, a lab set up to study an oozing, brain-colored body of liquid on another planet. Yet Gibaryan soon confronts the likelihood that the ocean Solaris may actually represent his own subconscious, and Tarkovsky appears to be attempting the same sort of space consciousness analogy Kubrick hinted at in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe.
For Tarkovsky flashes out his film with a bizarre, enigmatic, spirituality that ultimately defies hard and fast explanation. The soulful-eyed women and dreamlike lapes of time the ocean draws from Gibaryan's mind and memory, along with a palet of dewy, pastel colors unfamiliar to Western films, vaguely suggest other film and other motifs, but leave the viewer for the most part unsure and even uneasy.
The Man Who Fell to Earth. This man is hardly a mensch, that is when they show Bowie in the buff he doesn't even have a schlong! Woo woo! So that's why he came to America (penis envy.) Otherwise you wouldn't know. The movie is beautifully filmed and sometimes stands on the verge of not only showing intelligent life but also being the most cleverly wrapped political package since Chinatown. And then all of a sudden whap!--it's the dumbest one since The Day the Earth Stood Still. An article in last Thursday's Times about the Rugoft theater chain in New York congratulated the owners for handing out a plot booklet explanation with the price of admision; I wish they'd thought of that at the Maplewood Theater. If I had only known what the hell was going on in the last hour I wouldn't have had to ask: Why does Buck Henry's hair turn white in the space of five minutes? Why does Bowie's space shot fail? Why do his records sell? And yet, there is so much that is interesting in the film, so much canniness and so much good acting (including Bowie's) that at the risk of losing readership this early, we say go.
The Passenger is Antonioni at his most pretentious. Jack Nicholson assumes the identity of an international gunrunner who dies in his hotel in the African bush and for a few scenes it appears that the film may develop into a compelling spy thriller. But no such luck--Antonioni isn't really interested in guns--or anything else for that matter--so Nicholson simply wanders through Europe in an existential search for self-identity and the Meaning of Life, picking up a languid Maria Schneider en route. Only the film's visual beauty--Spanish landscape and Gaudi architecture shot in lush Italian style--in any way redeems this tedious monstrosity.
Perhaps the most politically sophisticated film to emerge from contemporary Cuba, Memories of Underdevelopment depicts the struggle of a young bourgeois intellectual to come to terms with the Cuban revolution. Sympathetic to the dilemmas of his situation, the film nevertheless conveys a strong sense of the meaning of the revolution for the Cuban people and of the dramatic changes in social relations it has brought about.
Union Maids is the best radical documentary since The Battle of Algiers. A study of three women CIO organizers in the '30s, the film intercuts contemporary material--newsreels and union songs--with interviews to produce a powerful portrait of these women as workers, as women, and as individuals. Much of the newsreel material is unusual and exciting--footage of hunger marches and strikes in Chicago and Detroit, for example--but it is the interviews which are the truly remarkable aspect of the film. These women, who were first interviewed by Staughton Lynd in Rank and File, are exceptionally articulate about their experiences, as well as able to bring contemporary political concerns, particularly feminism, to bear on the struggles of the '30s. But what makes the film most effective and moving is the way these women are able to communicate their deep commitment to creating a more human and participatory society, a commitment as important to them and to us now as it was in the '30s.
Idi Amin Dada, It's difficult to imagine a film which could make Idi Amin look good, but this one does, if only by contrast to the director's superficial and racist approach. Focussing almost entirely on Amin talking, the film portrays him as a fat African who speaks pidgin English, looks awfully funny in Western dress, and has delusions of grandeur. What needs to be remembered while watching this inane spectacle is that the man is a mass murderer whose caprises are only slightly more barbaric than his policies, and that many atrocities were undoubtedly going on while Barbet Schroeder was following Amin around with a camera.
This, as every other weekend, one is safe in going to the Harvard Epworth Church which without exception does the best, most comprehensive and most inspired film scheduling in the Boston area. They bring in the classic and the esoteric landmarks in cinema and Thursdays and Sundays the best place to be in Cambridge is in one of their long pews. Tonight they will run John Ford's autumn masterpiece The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Wayne, James Stewart, Lee Marvin) at 7:30. Sunday night they will run Von Stroheim's chopped up but still incomparable Greed. There are those who think it is the greatest movie ever made. Or would have been if the front office hadn't gotten its hands on it.
HARVARDHARKNESS COMMON
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, Ben Johnson, Timothy Bottoms and --woo woo!--Cybill Shepherd). America's most eclectic director's auspicious second film. Saturday at 8 and 10.
SCIENCE CENTER B
Meet Marlon Brando andSalesman (Two documentaries by the Maysles brothers.) Friday at 8, Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 and 9:30.
CAMBRIDGEBRATTLE
The Passenger at 5:45 and 9:35, Memories of Underdevelopment at 7:50--through Sunday.
CENTRAL I
Tunnelvision at 7:35 and 9, through Sunday. Uncle Miltie, who was much funnier, they took off Channel 47.
CENTRAL II
Murder By Death through Sunday at 7:15 and 9 at night. Considering the personnel, unbelievably unfunny. Terrible. Awful. Disappointing. Bad.
GALERIA
The Seduction of Mimi at 6 and 9:30, All Screwed Up at 4:10 and 7:35 through Sunday.
HARVARD SQUARE
Tonight, Monty Python and the Holy Grail at 6 and 9:05, The Groove Tube at 7:45 and 10:35. Friday and Saturday, Sleeper at 4:30 and 9:05 and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex at 5:55 and 10:30. Sunday, Godfather II at 8, Take the Money and Run at 6:20.
ORSON WELLES I
Idi Amin Dada at 7:25, 9:10, 10:50 through Sunday. A Portrait of the Dictator as Kingfish.
OW II
The Clockmaker at 4, 6, 8, 10.
OW III
The Man Who Fell to Earth and Star Trek Bloopers at 7:20 and 9:45.
BOSTON KENMORE
The Producers at 7:40 and 9:55. Sublime.
