Cinema Papers no. 82 March 1991 (2025)

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FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA ON ‘THE GODFATNER PART III’

BARBET SCHROEDER ON[...]

continues to be the principal film and television

development agency in Australia.

The AFC offers assistance to filmmakers through

0 script and project developm[...]productions and financing mechanisms
0 assistance to film and video organisations

0 special research and publication funding

The AFC also undertakes research, formulates
policy, represents the Australian film industry
internationally a[...]

r.\l'I'\‘I'I‘Ii[IV'IINtiIIAIIIII)» ‘ ‘ 7 '
- ,/
MARC[...]CING AS MICHAEL CORLEUNE IN FRANCIS FORD COPPOLNS
THE GDDFATHER PART III. SEE INTERVIEW WITH COPPOLA ON P. 14

E D I T 0 R
Scott Murray 32

ADMINISTRATION
Debrasharp[...]AN MCFARLANE
WEEKEND WITH KATE PHILIPPA BURN
WHAT THE MOON SAW ADRIAN JACKSON

Pa”‘a"mad 58 FILMING[...]lippe Mora
59 FRENCH FILM WEEK
DISK PROCESSING
on The Ba” HELEN BARLOW, SCOTT MURRAY
,,,,,N,,“ 54 B[...]Productions

Dis'rNiauTioN
Network Distribution

THE AVOCADO PLANTATION BRIAN MCFARLANE
BETWEEN THE STARS RAFFAELE CAPUTO
LUCHINO VISCONTI SCOTT MURRAY

BOOKS RECEIVED

68 SCRIPTWRITINGI ON THE MACINTOSH
DANIEL KAHN

70 PRODUCTION SURVEY
FILM[...]PERS IS PUBLISHED

WITH FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FROM THE 78
AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION
AND FILM VICTORIA

N T R I B
COPYRIGHT 1991 MTV PUBLISHING LIMITED. C O U T O R S

Signed articles represent the views of the authors _ __ _ _ 4
ANA MARIA BAHIANA is a Brazili[...]ELD is a freelance writer on film
specializing in the entertainment industry; MIKE DOWNEY is an interna[...]d in
Germany; PHILLIP DuclIAK is making a film on the life and work of Raymond Longford; IAN EPSTEIN is film
reviewer for The Melbourne Report; FRED HARDEN is a Melbourne film[...]AN IAcKsoN is a jazz lover and a music writer for The Age; DANIEL KARN is Computer
Operations Manager at the Australian Film Commission; GREG KERR is a freelance writer specializing in the
entertainment industry; BRIAN McFARLANE is an associate professor in the English Department of Monash
University; GEOFF MA[...]JIM SCHEMBRI
writes on film and entertainment for The Age; ANDREW L. URBAN is the Australian correspondent

for Moving Pictures International.

and not necessarily that of the editor and publisher.
While every care is taken with manuscripts and
materials supplied to the magazine, neither the editor
nor the publisher can accept liability for any loss or
da[...]ne may not be
reproduced in whole or part without the express
permission of the copyright owners. Cinema Papers is
publish[...]

At a previous meeting, the FFC also com-
menced negotiationswith theto become a
famous clown. When he meets Anatole, an
old man who has been forced to give up his

careeras a clown, Sim recognizes his chance.
Based on the book by David Martin.

20 DECEMBER

FEATURES

I-‘ATALBOND (90 mins) Intertropic Films. Pro-
duc[...]ill-killers leave
a trail ofdestruction — until the father ofone
of their victims begins a hunt of hi[...]st: Kim
Gyngell. No-holds-barred genre send-up of
the Australian police force in the 19605.
ON MY OWN (90 mins) Colosimo Film Pro-
duc[...]and
loss, triggered by his mother’s breakdown.
To be filmed in Canada and England.

TELEVISION

ANI[...]ee children re—build a run-
down animal park on the Queensland coast.
HEROES 11 — THE RETURN (2 x 120 mins)
Anthony Buckley Productions[...]Script: Peter Yeldman.
Lyon and his men sail back to Singapore
Harbour but are captured by the Japanese.

DOCUMENTARIES

LIFT OFF (26 x 80 mins)[...]elevision docu-
mentaries for children aged three to eight.
TRACKRECORD (4 x 30 mins) Sorena. Produc-
ers: john Mabey, Rhonda Mabey. Script:
Dion Boehme. The story of the past and
future of Australia’s railway system.[...]B2

DEAR SIR

In your issue of December 1990, the “Production
Survey” lists the feature Flynn as being reshotwith
a new director. As the original director of the
film, mayl suggest that only portions of the film
are being reshot.

The production was halted due to the pilots
dispute. My contract expired at the end of Janu-
my 1990 with the film uncompleted and awaiting
additional scenes.

As producer of the film, Boulevard Films was
entitled to do what it saw fit to complete the film,
but I would state that at no time during the
original production did the producer indicate to
me that he was unhappy with my work and had
approved the fine cut of all the completed scenes.

Yours sincerely
Brian Kavanagh

EDITOR: According to producer Frank Howson:

]&M [the sales agent] saw a cut of the film in
Cannes [lastyear] and loved the conceptbut felt
certain things weren’t explored the way they
could be. So we had a major rethink about the
film and]8cM had enough faith in us to put up
the money to reshoot.

This included replacing two Australian[...]ish actor and an American actor. Fiji
also became the location for New Guinea.

A full report on Flynn by Katherine Tulichwill
appear in the next issue of Cinema Papers.

DEAR EDITOR

Asian Cinema, the semi-armual j oumal of the Asian
Cinema Studies Society, seeks articles, boo[...]and
Asian-American film.

Please send submissions to Mira Binford,
Editor, Asian Cinema, Quinnipiac Co[...]eym Binford
Editor, Asian Cinema

CORRIGENDUM

In the previous issue of Cinema Papers, the
“Briefly” item on the AF I Awards (p. 5)
wrongly attributed Best Achievement in
Production Design to Lawrence Eastman.
The award was in fact won by Roger Ford
for Flirting. Cinema Papers apologizes for

the error.

SCRIPT READINGS

Another season of film script readings is to start
mid March at the Harold Park Hotel, Glebe, in
Sydney. Beginning 13 March (and continuing on
the next three Wednesdays), the readings are of
Werner Meyer’s “Final Touch”, Bob Ellis’ “Local
Boy”, Helen I-Iodgman’s “Beyond This Point”
and Gina Ronc[...]99 for
details.

AN EDITOR'S CHOICE

Best Film of the Year: Un Monde sans Pitie'(A World
Without Pity, Eric Rochant)

Rurmers-up: Shi no Toge (The Sting ofDeath, Kohei
Oguri), Cyrano de Bergerac (Iean-Paul
Rappaneau)

Best Australian Film of the Year: Return Home
(Ray Argall)

Most Disappointin[...]OCHANT, DIRECTOR OF UN MONDE SANS PINE

CANNES I991

THE ‘FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DU FILM’ AT CANNES
WILL BE HELD FROM 9 MAY TO 20 MAY.

AS THE NEXT ISSUE OF CINEMA PAPERS WILL BE THE
ANNUAL SPECIAL CANNES ISSUE, ALL PRODUCERS HOPING TO ATTEND
THE FESTIVAL, OR HAVING THEIR PRODUCT REPRESEN[...]

ofAustralia Association. SPAA announced that it was no longer holding
to its 1988 agreement with Equity, and which some pr[...]ctors Equity replied with an article
published in the November issue of its magazine, Equity. SPAA then issued a
public reply in January 1991. Given the on-going importance of the debate, both
pieces are reprinted here (with the kind permission of Equity and SPAA).

EQUITY

“SPAA DECLARES WAR”

The Screen Production Associauon of Australia

(SPAA)[...]ared war’ on Equity and announced its
intention to withdraw from its Agreement
with the union over the entry of imported
artists;

I announced thatAustralian producerswish to
stand on their own feet, free of government
assistance;

0 attacked the payment ofAmerican residuals
to Australian actors working in American
films.

The recovery of the industry is now injeop-
ardy. Equity must defend the minimal levels of
protection currently in force.[...]nly encourage those
in government who are anxious to end assistance
to the film industry.

The abandonment of SAG rates on U.S. pro-
ductions will mean that the Australian actors
employed will take a massive 75 per cent cut in
pay, while the majority of the cast — the American
performers - remain on SAG rates.

THE FACTS

Since the introduction of thejoint Equity-SPAA
Policy in 1988, Equity has given its blessing to the
entry of 181 overseas artists — 41 in productions
supportedby the FilmFinance Corporation (FF C) .
Roughly 75 per c[...]cumentaries and low-budget productions,
have used at least one overseas artist. Asjohn
Morris, the Chief Executive Officer of the FFC,
commented at a recent public seminar in Sydney,
“discussion [surrounding the imported artists
debate] indicates that people are speaking from
entrenched positions. Personally I think that
Equity has been extraordinarily supportive over
the past two years.”

SO WHAT DOES SPAA WANT?

SPAA wan ts the removal ofall specific restrictions
on the entry offoreign performers for all produc-
tions, including those funded by the public purse.
They want entry to be regulated by the Depart-
ment of Immigration’s (DILGEA) “net e[...]DILGEA introduced this test
in 1987 it encouraged the industry to develop a

1. For an earlier discussion, see “H[...]ers, No. 79.

self—regulatory code that defined the “netemploy—
ment benefit” criteria. The Equity—SPAA agree-
ment represented an effort to reach such a defi-
nition.

The difficulty Equity has with reliance on this
test[...]. After all, whatever criticisms they
may have of the Equity—SPAA Policy, it at least
clearly outlines the situations when overseas art-
ists may be engaged[...]satisfied with their
determination, will be free to protectits members
industrially.

Quite clearly, SPAA’s move is motivated by
the hope that government will find the task of
assessing “net employment benefits”[...]ld find itself,
together with New Zealand, being the only Eng-
lish—speaking countries with no regulation on the
temporary entry of performers.

PROFITABILITY

SPAA is running the line that, unless their mem-
bers are given an unfettered right to cast from the
ranks of the international acting community,
they will be unable to deliver ‘profitable’ films.
Their argument[...]mula which will guarantee box—office success.

Why then have a large number of films pro-
duced over the past decade which used foreign
performers died at the box office?

Why then have so many of these productions
failed to secure a release?

They have failed to explain why, for example,
The Delinquents, which cast the young U.S. per-
former Charlie Schlatter to ensure that the pro-
duction “opened in the US”, did not open in the
U.S. They have failed to comment on why Wendy
Cracked (2 Walnut, starring Rosanna Arquett[...]n Australia.

Greg Bright, a respected analyst of the Aus-
tralian industry, believes that films using[...]performance ofthe 400 films made in Australia in
the last 12 years. (Encore, 15 November 1990)

The fact is that the reasons for the commer-
cial success ofa production are complex. What is
clear, however, from the experience of the Aus-

tralian film industry is that the use of foreign
performers will not necessarily gu[...]tgovernmentassistance.
It is effectively inviting the government to aban-
don support for the industry as a ‘trade-off" for
the deregulation of importation guidelines.

WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT FUND THE
INDUSTRY ANYWAY?

As our agricultural and manufac[...]too well aware, government is no longer
prepared to support industries which cannotstand
on their own feet. Industry protection is ‘on the
nose’ in Canberra.

To date, however, an exception has been
made for our[...]hat Australian and
overseas audiences have access to programmes
with so-called “significant Australian content”.
This is the same policy objective that underpins
our television drama quota.

The “significant Australian content” require-
me[...]y
alleged, thatAustralian filmmakers are obliged to
contain their filmmaking ambitions and concen-
t[...]raliana’. Australian
filmmakers have available to them all genres of
filmmaking, from fantasy to horror. Whatgovern—
ment policy attempts to achieve is that “non-
Australian”orso-called[...]ineligible for government assistance.

1. WHAT IS THE SPAA-EQUITY
AGREEMENT?

The SPAA—Equity Agreement regulates the entry
of foreign performers. The policy distinguishes
between government-assisted, privately financed

and foreign—funded productions. The policy is
more restrictive in relation to government—funded

productions and less so in relation to foreign
productions.

2. HOW DOES IT WORK IN
RELATION TO FFG PRODUCTIONS?

All FFC productions (except low—budget produc-
tions) are automatically entitled to use one over-
seas artist in any role providing that at least one
third of the budget raised is outside Australia.
Additional ar[...]asonable employ-
ment opportunities are available to Australians.
By way of example, Equity agreed to 27 U.S.
performers being imported for the series Mission:
Impossible. >

CINEMA PAPERS 82 - 3

cast, as was the case for the television pilot, Aaron ‘s
Way?

4. WHAT IF THE PRODUCER CANNOT FIND
A SUITABLE ACTOR?

Where the producer is unable to find a suitable
performer from the ranks of theAustralian acting
community, he/she is entitled to import overseas
performers providing that a reasonable attempt
has been made to locate an Australian for the
role.

This provision applies irrespective of the
budget of the production or whether or not the
producer has already used an imported artist,
under the one-third foreign-finance rule de-
scribed above[...]’t really, except in so far as SPAA has
decided to challenge our so-called “better rates”
principle at the same time as withdrawing from
the imported artist agreement.

The better rates principle provides, in short,
that i[...]ia, U.S. rates and residuals apply. This has been
the case on all U.S. features and television pro-
grammes produced in Australia since 1985. The
rationale for this policy is self evident. Australian
producers enjoy the lowest actor fee structure in
the English-speaking world (bar New Zealand).
We are quite happy to continue with this position
to give indigenous programmes a competitive
edge. We are not prepared to extend this subsidy

to international productions where Australian
actors[...]on superior contracts.

6. WHAT IF EQUITY APPLIES THE
RULES UNFAIRLY? CAN THE PRODUCER
APPEAL?

Yes, the policy includes an independent arbitra-
tion mechanism which the producers may call
upon if they consider themselv[...]rse, be a number of produc-
erswho would continue to cast primarilyfrom the
ranks of the Australian community. However,
while difficult to predict, we suspect there would
be others who would elect to import foreign
performers for the majority, if not all, leading
roles.

Authorised[...]TION
of AUSTRALIA: IMPORTATION OF
FOREIGN ACTORS

The Screen Production Association of Australia
consid[...]uity’s recentarticle “SPAA
declares war” in the November issue of Equity is
misleading and inflammatory as indicated below:

I. EQUITY: “The Screen Production Associa-
tion (SPAA) has ‘dec[...]e
requested a meeting with Actors Equity in a bid to

4 - CINEMA PAPERS 82

open up dialogue between the two organizations
on this and other issues with a[...]e approach. This approval was flatly rejected
by the union. Furthermore, in announcing our
decision to terminate the 1988 Agreement, SPAA
stated, “much of the success in achieving [the]
recovery [of our industry] depends on the

achievement of a spirit of co-operation between[...]A has announced that Austra-
lian producers wish to stand on their own feet,
free of government assis[...]s-
sary’ It is effectively inviting government to
abandon support for the industry as a ‘trade off’
for the deregulation of importation guidelines.”

SPAA: What SPAA actually stated was:

(i) “If the decline in the Australian film and
television industryis to be reversed withoutever-
increasing injections of public money, its en tre-
preneurs must be allowed to operate in a
commercially-driven environment that[...]ofitable productions ...”

(ii) “Our goal is to remove arbitrary restrictions
on importation ofoverseas actors and thereby
provide the right environment in the Aus-
tralian film and television industry to: allow
producers to manage their own affairs in
accordance with commercial reality; en-
courage foreign investment; increase the
international competitiveness ofthe industry;
exp[...]and television produc-
tions; create morejobs in the industry; assist
Australian actors to have an international
presence; and decrease reliance on government
assistance. ”

(iii) “With the ability to increase opportunities for
private investment in the film and television
industry it can be anticipated that the indus-
try can achieve increased independence from gov-
ernment subsidies.”

3. EQUITY: “The recovery of the industry is now in
jeopardy.”

SPAA: This would[...]s industrial action and thwarts
SPAA’s attempts to create the right environment
to enable recovery: i.e., to increase our industry’s
international competitiveness and hence increase
the level ofproductions andjob opportunities for
all in the industry.

4. EQUITY: “SPAA’s propaganda will only encour-
age those in government who are anxious to end
assistance in the film industry government is
no longer prepared to support industries which
cannot stand on their own feet To date, how-
ever, an exception has been made for o[...]icance.”

SPAA: SPAA’s policy does not reject the cultural
argument for government funding of this[...]is cultural and
hence SPAA has and will continue to vigorously
lobby government for assistance to the industry.
But given that Equity is correct that there are
those in government anxious to end that assis-
tance, then producers must convin[...]ses in
accordance with commercial realities so as to
justify continued assistance. The government has
already announced that it proposes to reduce the
level of financial assistance to the film industry.

Actors Equity are out of touch w[...]if
they believe that our industry can be allowed to
operate outside the wider industrial and com-
mercial context.

Actors Equity should read the FFC’s Funding
Guidelines for 1991. The FFC’s own objectives
include: “To support projecm with demonstrated
market interest and with budget levels commen-
surate with the potential market and realization
of returns; to develop a committed and active
private sector involvement in the financing of
Australian films; and to maximize returns on
each of its investments commensurate with the
potential returns for the appropriate production
categories.”

The requirements of FFC funding include:

“An overa[...]40% [an aggregate target] in its approvals
during the 1991 calendar year; substantially more
than 40% in the case of high-budget projects or
projects where the potential for FFC recoupment
has been significantly diminished due to secured
pre—sale commitments; television drama to be
supported by Australian television pre-sales; and
in the case ofhigh-budgetfeature films, signifi-
cant distribution attachments, either in the form
of direct investments or advances for at least one
major territory.”

5. EQUITY: “Since the introduction of the joint
Equity-SPAA Policy in 1988, Equity has given its
blessing to the entry of 181 overseas artists -41 in
productions supported by the Film Finance Cor-
poration.”

SPAA: What this so-called ‘fact‘ conveniently omits
to make clear is that, of this alleged figure of 181,
only 63 were ‘blessed’ under the 1988 Equity-
SPAA Agreement between 1988 and 1990[...]imported for
Blood Oath, 9 Japanese imported for The Tas-
manian Story, and 5 others imported on ethnic
grounds.

6. EQUITY: “The difficulty Equityhaswith reliance
on this [DILGEA[...]Manual as:

“Net employment benefit means that the
entry of each overseas artist or non-performing
c[...]concert, recording
or presentation will result in the employment of
at least one additional Australian resident within
the entertainment industry. Sponsors need to
show that the entry of the overseas entertainer
would generate more employme[...]tainer would generate, ifa local entertainer
were to undertake the same activity.”

There is nothing uncertain or[...]test. It is nothing short of rapacious for
Equity to suggest that it should have the decision-
making power as to who should be allowed entry
into Australia rather[...]“Quite clearly, SPAA’s move is moti-
vated by the hope that government will find the
task of assessing ‘net employment benefi[...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
invit[...]s
6th annual Screenwriting Fellowship Awards.

Up to five Fellowships of
$20,000 each will be awarded
to new screenwriters.

Deadline for application is June 1, 1991.

The Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting are open to
persons who have not earned money
writing feature[...].

For entry rules and an application form,
write to:

The Nicholl Fellowships
Academy of Motion Picture Art[...]e: Crossley «M

.3. eutique Hotel is
open.

In the heart of the Cinema
and Theatre District.
Intimate, Stylish, Chic.

“That's a wrap!”

THE CROSSLEY HOTEL
51 LITTLE BOURKE STREET MELBOURNE VIC 3000
PHONE (03) 639 1639 FAX (03) 639 0566
TOLL FREE[...]

twoomu IAIIII I!

credible. It’s something they know.

The scene involves the captive girl’s seducing an Iroquois guard
in order to escape, together with her father, her lover and the
central character, Father Laforgue, who have been tortured and are
now trussed up at the other end of the hut, feigning sleep.

Beresford is making Black Robe, arguably the most difficult film
of his career. The multi—national cast and crew includes Quebecois,
Indians, Canadians and Australians; the locations are isolated, the
conditions are harsh, the extras are inexperienced, the language is
foreign, and the budget is finite. After nine weeks of an II-week[...]CINEMA PAPERS 82

There's only one simple shot in the whole film, and there are over 900
shots. The logistics are huge: because of the weather, we need extra
things to keep interiors warm, to keep the actors wa.rm and there are
the location moves, the catering, the transport, everything.

And the fact that Beresford's working with a part-Austral[...]s based on fragments of manuscripts compiled over the years in
France.

Beresford had wanted to make afilm ofit ever since the bookwas
published, but the rights had already been acquired by Canada’s
Al[...]angement fell through, but Beresford again missed the
boat; nevertheless, he kept in touch with Moore. And when a third
director failed to get the film going, Beresford was finally in the right
place at the right time. He says unceremoniously:

By the third time, Driving Miss Daisy was about to win the Academy
Awards, so they thought they were onto a good thing here.

Alliance is now the Canadian co-production partner, with its
chief ex[...]story, it is built on factual
accounts sent back to _]esuit headquarters from New France in the
17th Century by Jesuit priests from their mission to convert the
Indians of the region to Christianity.

In the process, they clashed with a primitive culture ju[...]torture and often death. As Brian
Moore writes in the introduction to his novel:

Although Beresford is after the human interest and the sheer
drama ofit all, he concedes that during the research he learnt a lot:

You can’t research this story without coming out admiring the_]esuits.
Even ifyou went into it as the greatest anti—cleric ofall time, you’d come
o[...]y make
Schwarzenegger look like a sissy.

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of successfully making this film
had always been the casting of the lead actor in the role of Father
Laforgue, the young Jesuit whose journey relies on his absolute
faith, as it becomes a struggle for survival amidst the most cruel and
inhospitable circumstances. Beresford recognized that itwas a hard
role to cast, because he felt it was essential to have someone with a
degree of spirituality and depth, otherwise there was the real danger
of the actor looking absurd. Lothaire Bluteau, who played the lead
role in Denys Arcand’sjesus of Montreal, Beresford feels has qualities
that make him convincing:

I’d suggested Lothaire Bluteau along time ago, but I was told he didn’t
speak English. And then I was in London editing Mister johnson, and he
came[...]] in which he played
a psychotic male prostitute. I went to see it and thought, ‘I-Ie’d have to
be pretty good learning all that by rote!’ So I called his agent in London
and we met the next day.

Bluteau, of course, speaks English quite well, albeit with an
accent. This may well work in the film's favour.

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: FATHER LAFORGUE, WHO IS SENT TO CONVERT THE
INDIANS TO CHRISTIANITY. AN ALGONGUIN INDIAN CHILD, FATHER LAFORGUE AND
DANIEL [ADAN YOUNG). ANNUKA, DAUGHTER OF THE ALGONQUIN CHIEF, AND

THE LOVER OF DANIEL. BRUCE BERESFORD’S BLACK ROBE.

Set in New France (Quebec), the script is in English except for
the Indian dialogue, which is spoken in the languages of the various
tribes—- Huron, Iroquois and Algonquin — and subtitled. The reason
it is an English language film is that it would not have had the
commercial potential, and could not have been fi[...]t that Beresford
admires immensely, required that the film be shot in sequence, as
thejourney into the wilderness begins in late autumn and ends in
bitter winter. This meant a degree of haste in getting theto handle the Australian end, after having worked happily and
successfully together on The Fringe Dwellers, and later having spent
eight months and $3 million on preparing for TotalRecall, which in
the end they didn't get to make, as Carolco bought the project from
a cash-strapped De Laurentiis.

The production, budgeted at $11 million, needed 30 per cent
Australian finance, and the Film Finance Corporation investment
has to be spent on Australian elements. Milliken came to a point
where she had 26% of the budget in place from Australian sources,
and, in the face of weather deadlines, finally borrowed the balance
through her own company so the shoot could go ahead.

This is a milestone ventur[...]ntries, and, despite a
degree of friction between the crews, the film came in on time and
on budget.

CINE[...]

The friction came about simply by the different way of doing
things, says Milliken:

Australia has the best production system in the world. We‘ve taken the
best of the British and American systems. There is a good cha[...]s
interactive and so it runs less smoothly. Also, the Australian system
encourages anticipation, wherea[...]ctive.

But Milliken is not really negative about the project,because she
believes it is a worthwhile co-production, with valid benefits to all
parties:

Australia is able to help Canada make a film that is important to their
social history; and we’re getting the experience of working in another
country, with Bruce Beresford, on a film that he really wanted to make.

Among the Australian crew is a core unit of department heads
that make up what could be called the Beresford team, a factor that
has considerable significance when the film is as difficult to make as
this one. The collaborative elements become crucial, and the
creative decisions simply must interlock. The ‘team’ is impressive:

PETER JAMES, director[...]ago on a few television commercials. They planned to
shoot Tender Mercies and Total Recall together, b[...]lly teamed up on Dfiving Miss Daisy,
and went on to make Mister johnson.

‘I0 - CINEMA PAPERS 82

CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: FIGHT SCENE IN THE INDIAN VILLAGE.

THE ALGONOUIN CHIEF, CHOMINA [AUGUST SCHELLENBERG], L[...]CANADIAN FIRST ASSISTANT DIRECTOR PEDRO GANDOL ON THE SET OF

THE AUSTRALIAN-CANADIAN CO-PRODUCTION, BLACK ROBE.

H[...]reaker’Moram.‘and Money Movers, and
later did the design for The Fringe Dwellers and Mister jolmson.
GARYWILKINS,[...]ed on sound with Beresford
on fourpreviousfilms: The Gettingofl/Vsdom, ‘Breaker’Momnt, The Club,
Puberty Blues.

TIMWELLBURN, editor— has[...]sford, TheFrlngeDwellers.

Peter James emphasizes the close-knit working relationship
between the two of them:

Bruce is the only director I’ve worked with whose coverage of a scene is
exactly as I’d do it. There's always a technical sympathy; we tend to agree
onjust about everything. After the first couple of days on Driving Miss
Daisy, I felt compelled to remark that] didn’thave much to say. Butwhen
there is a difference of opinion, it[...]and we quickly agree. For
example, it was my idea to shoot that copulation scene between the girl
and the guard through the flames of the fire in the hut. I thought it
would be a visual reflection of a quote I read during research, when a
Jesuit priest remarked about the Indians: ‘They spend their lives in
smoke — and eternity in flames.’

The smoke is a reference to the Indians’ frequent use of smoke
as away of keepi[...]ly provide a history of 17th-
Century Quebec.

By the last two weeks of the 11-week shoot, everyone was anxious
to get to the end, and go home. The complications and difficulties
were swelling in proportion to the fatiguejames could be expected
to have reached a kind offrenzied animation, but is totally relaxed,
even smiling gently. The reason is Beresford:

I feel comfortable and secure because he's done his homework, so there
are no sudden seat-of-the-pants changes that require re-lighting. Unlike
other directors, he’ll shoot every corner of the set, giving the audience
a feel of being there, in a 360 degree p[...]deed do his homework: as usual, he story-
boarded the film well in advance, then prepared each day’s filming
the night before. But even this much preparation can’t diminish the
work of directing performances. With the copulation scene, he was
faced with two inexperienced actors trying to do a scene that
entailed considerable potential f[...]it by being very direct and
straightforward, but at the same time being fully understanding of

the actors’ feelings.

Originally, the carcasses had been frozen, to limit decomposi-
tion, but, in view of the action, the hut had to be keptwarm and the
animals’ blood soon began to drip slowly onto the cast and crew. The
fire in the middle helped matters warm up, and by the end ofthe day
there was enough genuine atmosphere to please anyone.

It took that long to shoot the scene, partly because Beresford
wanted the main action to circle the fire. The girl approaches the
Iroquois guard, her hands and feet bound, and ind[...]nts
a drink. As he obliges, he also helps himself to a fondle, which she
encourages with body language[...]languages.

This part takes place on one side of the fire, then he has to
manoeuvre her behind the fire across to the other side, so, after he
has mounted her, she can have access to a giant moose foreleg, with
which she smashes him across the head, and he falls into the fire.

This second action is of course stunt work, so the shot is as
complicated as any in the film, with complex but subtle lighting
needs, disciplined action and restricted camera access.

Then the long shots have to be done, from behind the trussed-
up ‘sleeping’ bodies at the other end of the hut, and finally some
reaction close-ups.

It is as detailed as the production design: Herbert Pinter has
created a r[...]because it is authentic.
He is adamant that it is the best way:

Some people said to me, ‘It’s the 17th Century, so who’s going to
remember?’, but that’s not how I work. I’d say 99 per cent ofwhat you
see is accurate. W[...]ur homework, you avoid silly mistakes.

But doing the homework wasn’t easy:

There’s not much aroun[...]tly. Also, we
found conflicting reports. In 1629, the English took Quebec and burnt
it down. There are differing accounts ofwhat fortifications they found.
The English captain tried to save face and boosted the figures, and wrote
that it was almost impossible to take the fort. But the account by
Champlain [the captain of the resident French regiment], which is
corroborated elsewhere, shows that the fort was in fact extremely weak
and poor.

Pinter[...]t in Vancouver, but
costing $37,000 in transport) to build the outer walls of the huts.

In the Huron village seen at the end of the film, Pinter created
a strikingly authentic littl[...]s waxed onto
pieces of stone that are wedged into the forks of stag antlers.

The look of the film will move from the amber of autumn to the
grey/green of autumn and winter, with cold blues, and gradually
moving into the contrast of black and white as the snow thickens. As
Peterjames sees it, the trees and the rivers are as much characters
as the people: they look brighter or bleaker, and they contribute to
the mood.

CINEMA PAPERS 82 - I1

ADAN YOUNG

Australian Equity had no wish to impose an Australian on
an intrinsically Canadian story, and the co-production
had enough ‘points’ to qualify anyway. But as there was
nobody obvious for the role of Daniel in Canada, the
producers decided to have a look in Australia, anyway.

Casting consul[...]orn and bred in Canada, migrating with his
family at the age of 9.

The interview, between Barrett, Milliken and Young,
was taped and sent to Beresford, who asked Young to
screen test in Canada, before offering him the role.
Beresford thought Young had the right look: “And there
is something fresh about him that I liked he has a
natural talent.”

Young had studied with Peter and Penny Williams at
the Phillip Street Theatre, and also worked briefly with
the Australian Young People's Theatre (YPT). He was
two weeks into rehearsals as Romeo when the call came
that he had the part, but the YPT gladly released him:

I was working at Darling Harbour at the Crepe Escape as a
cook — and cooking suddenly made no sense. They had to let
me go for the rest of the day; I wu so excited.

Bya remarkable coincidence, his father, Chip Young,
a writer and broadcaster, had written the history of the
Sault St Marie region as a children’s book. Young read the
book as the first step in his research.

Now, he is torn between trying to get into the Shake-
speare company in Ontario, and returning to Sydney,
which also has a lot to offer him:

I always had a dream to do Hamlet in Central Park — or in
London. Somew[...]London especially, there are so many
subcultures. I never want to act just for one audience; I want
to appeal to farmers as well as statesmen.

Young clearly remembers what triggered his interest
in acting:

I was about 14, and I was cleaning my room, when I came

across a picture book. It was told by Shake[...]doing dif-

ferent plays each day. People wanted to see magic the
blood the poetry of it all. It really spurred me on.

Learning fast from Beresford and his fellow actors,
Young hopes to be an all-rounder, like the actors in that

Shakespeare storybook:

I’m working on it. I walk like a moose and sing like a duck,
sword fight like an emu but I’m working on it.

CINEMA PAPERS B2

BIACK ROBE

Rushes show the cast paddling canoes in icy water (Beresford fell
in twice), dragging canoes on slippery, icy snow along the river-
banks, stumbling through forest, trudging through bush. This is
neither glamorous nor comfortable.

The landscape around the St Laurence river is a mix of wide
valleys and mountains; ice has choked some of the rivers into narrow
channels, and the light is steely grey. By four in the afternoon,
daylight is gone.

Much of the script is intense emotionally, and there are aust[...], striking silhouettes or
vibrant, earthy moments to reflect the changing circumstances.

There are scenes, for ex[...]itch
doctor, Mestigoit, confronts Laforgue: here, the exotic facial paint
of Mestigoit contrasts with the pale, bearded face of Laforgue, each
a symbol of their respective magic.

It is easy to see why Beresford cast Bluteau as Laforgue. A
diminutive figure who prefers a monk-like solitude off the set,
Bluteau is, first of all, the most dedicated actor I have ever seen on
a set. Whether he is called or[...]iscussing ideas with Beresford, orjames. He wants to know
every frame, and has a possessive view of the film. He is not an arm’s-
length participant, he says. He has to know, and to agree with, all the
major creative decisions. He wants it to be a film he fully endorses.

That spiritual cre[...]him a formidable actor in this sort of role.

Of the lead actors, he is the most experienced, with the excep-
tion of the prolific August Schellenberg, who plays Chomina, the
old Algonquin chief.

His daughter Annuka is play[...]ut, and Adan Young is
making his debut as Daniel, the young carpenter who accompanies
Laforgue into the wildemess falling in love with Annuka along the
way.

Young, just turned 18, is a Canadian-born S[...]re seen a
camera. They were needed for a scene in the Iroquois village where
Laforgue, Daniel and Chomi[...]e
stripped naked, tortured, humiliated and forced to sing. The
villagers are supposed to look on, laughing.

The shots of the actors were done, and Beresford wanted to do
the cover shots of the villagers laughing. The actors had been very
convincing; the long house in which the scene takes place was damp,
it was several degree[...]nberg had keened a chilling Indian death chant
on the command of the Iroquois chief.

When it came to it, the villagers found it impossible to laugh
convincingly, after seeing such nice people[...]tried several times before changing tack. He took the actors
aside, and then reset the scene for another take; by this time the
actors were rugged up and they would sing off camera for the
Indians‘ reaction.

Then Beresford called “Action!” and the three actors launched
into a rousing version of “Waltzing Matilda”, sending the Indians
and the crew into fits of laughter. Beresford got his shot. I

Virgin Vision Australia Pty. Limited[...]nfusion
which has arisen from its packaging of
“The Phantom of the Opera”
video cassettes recently released by it.
Neither Virgin Vision Australia Pty. Limited
nor the video cassette has any connection
with “The Phantom of the Opera”
musical which commenced in Australia on
December 8 and produced in Australia by

The Really Useful Group Pty. Limited L

and Cameron[...]HONE (03) 31a 0451 FACSIMILE (ca) 319 1451

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CINEMA PAPERS 82 - ‘I3

t’s much easier to cook than to
make films ”, Francis Ford
Coppola is saying ov[...]ccino that remains untouch-
ed. getting colder by the minute, on the table ofParamount Picture is
commissmzy. “I'm always when I wok. You have all those
lingredienzs'amund‘and ltakfes 11 minutes to

cook. when you bring it out ezvergvbody ha f[...]film, you go through hell
and people go. ‘Ah. I don ’t know. I don’! like this. ’ ”

- CINEMA BAEER5 82.

third and final act in the
Corleone family saga, THE G01)-
FATHER PART III, a film that, to begin with, Coppola didn ’t want to make.
“ButI also didn ’t want to make number two ”, he admits with a “I felt
I had told the whole story and that there was nothing more to say. But films,
you know, have a life of their o[...]d even say jealousy - for his characters
combined to create an offer he couldn ’t rq‘use. Now, afier another sleepless
night completing the final editing stages, it’s up to the canolli and
cappuccini of the “authentic Sicilian high tea” with which Paramount is
celebrating the first screenings of Tm: GODFATHER PART HI. And, of course,
also up to the American critics who, after much agonizing over C[...], from now on, he’s on hold. He doesn ’t want to read
the newspapers - or, better yet, he wants to “go read the paper in the
morning without being terrified of what I ’ve done wrong”. He wants to
travel in Europe and play with his granddaughter.[...]est things”, he says with a really wide smile.

I6 - CINEMA PAPEIS 82

The Godfather Part [H is an end of a cycle, a tale of[...]ing Lear. Is this your
impression?

First of all, I didn’t know I was going to make three Godfatherfilms.
When I made theThe
people we know in reality are really very disreputable, terrible
people.” I was very concerned about that.

Then, I realized that I really had approached the Corleones
more as a royal family. The Godfatheris the story of a great king who
had three sons, and eac[...]onny his hot temper andAlfredo his sweetness. So,
I was already thinking of the movie as a kind of a story of a king.

When I started working on this one, I kind of felt The Godfather
Part II had said all I could say. I didn’t know where to begin. It gets
harder the more you do, because you have less to work with. So, I
looked for inspiration to Shakespeare and the great artists of the
past. Although we will never be on their plane, it’s still all right to
look to them for guidance. I did; I looked to King Lear.

Lear had a successful career as a king and he had done hard
things in his life. Now, if I could make Michael like King Lear But
I didn’t try to go too far with the analogy, because I also found
inspiration in Greek tragedy and Italian opera. As in all classic
stories, the daughter always represents purity, like Gilda in Rigoletto.
I remember that when I was a child, I was always so heartbroken at
the end of Rigoletto because he lost his daughter, his only love.

Which touches on one of the main controversies surrounding The
Godfather PartHI: the casting of your daughter, Sofia, in the crucial
part of Michael Corleone’s daughter, Mary. Why did you choose
Sofia?

Well, Sofia was cast at the last minute. We had been hoping to have
Winona Ryder play the part, butWinona began to be delayed on her

Now my daughter, who had been visiting the set, was about to go
back to college and she was in the shower apparently. I suddenly
thought, “Let’s get Sofia down here and get her in; she's got to do
it. ” And Sofia came.

Sofia didn’t really have aspirations to be an actress, although she
had done some little[...]in clothing and fashion
design. But she said, “I’1l try”, and she was very brave.

Obviously, she caused quite an unnecessary commotion. I mean,
it is true that I was using her more like an Italian realist director
would, as a real person who happens to be in a fictional situation.

Mary is, of course, essential to the story. A man like Michael
Corleone, in every grea[...]t is evil, and another that is pure and
innocent. The daughter symbolizes that and, in the end, when he
loses her, he loses that innocent, p[...]king Michael Corleone (Al
Pacino), more and more, the focus of your story. In this film, he is
the centre of a major moral dilemma. Why Michael?

When I began this story, in the first Godfather, I felt that Michael had
always been a good man. He was the one in the family who wanted
to be legitimate. He was a Marine and he didn’t want to go into his
family business. Yet, circumstances forced him to protect his family.

I always felt there must be more about Michael that[...]a murderer. Many of us really wouldn’t be able to do
this. So, there is this dynamic within his per[...]ething horrible about him, something murderous in the tree of
his existence.

FACING PAGE: "THE CORLEONES BECAME LIKE AN AMERICAN ROYAL FAMILY”, HERE WITH
FRIENDS AT PALERMO’S TEATRO MASSIMO. MARY [SOFIA COPPOLA),[...]AR HAD A SUCCESSFUL CAREER AS A

KING ... NOW, IF I COULD MAKE MICHAEL LIKE KING LEAR.” SOFIA COPPOLA AS MARY
CORLEONE: '’IN ALL CLASSIC STORIES, THE DAUGHTER ALWAYS REPRESENTS PURITY."

THE GODFATHER PART III.

But I think that when a man maybe gets older, he wants very
much to be a good man, wants to do good things and leave good
things for his children. He wants to confess and be redeemed for his
sins, and the Church becomes an opportunity for him to become
legitimate, to become good.

The Catholic church plays a key role in your film and, clearly, a not
very flattering one. Why did you pick up religion to portray the
moral dilemma, the delicate balance between good and evil?

First of all, the Catholic religion has confession, where you can be
redeemed for your sins. I thought that itwas very powerful for a man
to wish to be redeemed.

And, of course, the Vatican represents thousands of years of a
very strange history and politics like any institution. I thought it
would be very interesting if, the higher Michael tried to go to
redeem himself, the more and more he got closer to what is the real
Mafia, the real power.

Also, all the Godfatherfilms had one thing in common, which is
a thread of history running through them. In the first Godfather, it
was the end of World War II; in the second, the Cuban Revolution.

I/Vhen I began to read about the history connected with the
BankAmbrosiano scandal and the death ofjohn Paul I— and I don’t
know the truth about either - I felt that perhaps the Vatican was very
arrogant in not allowing the investigators from Rome. If a powerful
institution like the Church says they don't have to answer anything,
that allows us to imagine whatever we will!

This film, of course, is purely fictional. And I think it is a very
spiritual film with a great l[...]tual matters. It is a religious
film in terms of the real principles of Christianity.

CINEMA PAPERS 82 - ‘I7

Then I got a call from Mr Mancuso [Frank Mancuso, presid[...]es] and he said, “Well, you can do that.” So, I
said I’d try, and I did. I brought him a report that said Iwould like
to make it as a kind of King Lear and that it had a[...]It
would be a story of business, of finance, and the higher levels of the
finance in the world and what the real Mafia is: people in the world
who run everything and have absolute power without having to
account to anyone about it.

You once said that the tragedy of the Corleones is the tragedy of
America. Now that you have completed the Corleones’ saga, and
that America seems to be, again, at critical crossroads in its history,
do you still see that parallel?

When I finished the first Godfather, and it was, as I said, heavily
criticized, I realized that it was true that it wasn’t really[...]a cycle of stories, about family and
loyalty. And I also noticed that Michael Corleone, the second-
generation Italian—American, reminded me of America itself. The
Mafia, of course, comes from years and years in the past but, when
it was planted in American soil, it found real strength. Michael
represented the kind of phases that America was going through. In[...]cious and violent, as we perhaps experienced with
the presidency during Watergate.

Now, I felt, is a new time for America. This America, in[...]must become reflexive.
America must really tell the truth about what it has done over the
years and sort of rise above it. There must be a new, reflective
America, an America that’s prepared to take part with the other
countries honestly and notjust in this self-righteous kind of mood
that Michael Corleone was into. The Michael Corleone of this story
is more trying to deal with the truth, confessing to be redeemed, and
I feel that the United States will do that.

You know, we are in[...]ur armed
forces are in another country and it’s the oldAmericawanting to act.
Butl also believe there are people here who are starting to realize
that this is a time for reflection, an era of spiritual maturity. So, I
tried to show Michael being less of the paranoid instigator of
violence and more someone confessional, trying to find new mean-
ing, trying to make aplace for himself spiritually. I don’t know if that
is a correct analogy for our[...]be wonderful if it
could be.

What do you feel is the reason behind the enduring appeal of the
Corleone saga, not only in America, but all over the world?

TOP: A CELEBRATION FOLLOWS MICHAEL CORLEONE’S BEING HONOURED BY

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ("THE REAL MAFIA”). BOTTOM (LEFT TO RIGHT): MICHAEL AND
VINCENT MANCINI, THE ILLEGITIMATE SON OF SONNY CORLEONE. VINCENT AND
MARY CORLEONE. VINCENT DEFENDS HIMSELF.THE GODFATHER PART III.

‘I8 - CINEMA PAPERS 82

“ when I make a film, I enjoy ... expey
career has been partly related to II

Also, people have always been fascinated with outlaws and
bandits. But I don’t know the real answer.

What makes Al Pacino so special to you?

I think primarily his intelligence. He’s a very t[...]telligent actor, as he’s always been, even when I knew him years

20 - CINEMA PAPERS 82

"DON'T FORGET, I DIDN'T MAKE THIS FILM ALONE. I HAD AROUND ME SOME OF THE
GREATEST ARTISTS OF OUR TIME”: TOP: DIRECTOR OF[...]ike all actors, he’s spoiled, he doesn’t want to wake up in the
morning, he’s not comfortable, etc., butI always knew that the way
to deal with Al is with his intelligence.

Now that[...]tion of
his intelligence and his experience.

Did the fact that The Godfather Part III was one of the anticipated
films of the year in any way jeopardize the project?

Much of the time I was very depressed and very frightened. I would
be frightened on Monday, I'd get encouraged on Tuesday, and
depressed Wednesday. I[...]xperience for me.

However, there were times when I was very excited and thrilled
with the beautiful photography that I saw being done. Don’tforget,
I didn’t make this film alone. I had around me some of the greatest
artists of our time: Al Pacino and [cost[...]s and [pro-
duction designer] Dean Tavoularis, so I was in good company.

Your whole career could als[...]es. How do you
reconcile your ups and down? Is it the industry’s or your own fault
that they happen?

Certainly it has to be my fault because I don’t know who else’s fault
it could be. Butl think my career shows I always try to do something
in a different style. If you look at a list of my films — Apocalypse Now,
Rumble Fish, One From the Heart, The Godfather — they're all very dif-
ferent in style. When I make af1lm,Ien_joyvery much experimenting
and seeing what I can learn. Some styles the public has enjoyed, but
it’s like food: ifl were to give you some food you aren’t familiar with,
you might be put off by it. So I think my roller-coaster career has
been partly related to the fact thatl don’t have one consistent style
in my work.

As for my excesses, I have always tried to be a professional film
director and the only examples in the twenty odd films where I had
excessive budgets were when it was my own money. When I made
Apocalypse Now and One From the Heart, I financed them, and I said,
“I love this. I want to do this. It’s my money. I’ll do it! ” But whenever
I deal with someone else’s money, as in this case Paramount
Pictures‘, I am as scrupulous and as not excessive as I can be.

All in all, my career is like any of our lives: it has ups and downs.
And at least I try always to do something that's a little beyond my
reach, so that I’ll try my best. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I almost
succeed, but I think this is what life's all about.

But do you, as an artist who has to deal with the intricacies of money
and power, defend yourself from the corruption that comes with
them, and that you portray so well in your Godfather cycle?

Well, I've been spared from the corruption of money for a very long
time. As for power, as of the last eleven years I’ve just been pedalling
very hard to hang on to my life. Ifl do have a period in which I know
some power and money, Iwill watch out[...]

movie’s completion in jeopardy.

OMETIMES even the most meticulous preparation for a

production is[...]oduction, Virdjina
-A Kind of Woman.

In choosing to build authentic sets in the form of houses
and churches in and around this wild coastal area, the produc-
tion didn’trealize itwas sitting on a p[...], as their large blue camera car headed back
from the set to their hotel through the misty Balkan evening,
strange shapes appeared on the road up ahead. “The van drew
nearer”, commented one crew member, “and it seemed as ifwe
were in the middle of our own movie. It was like the wild west:
a complete barricade surrounded by armed men."

The armed men were members of the Serbian minority
living in the Knin area who had declared a kind of UDI
(Unilate[...]ear ofrenewed attacks from Croatian nationalists. The biggest
fear was that, on the eve of democratic elections in the region,
discrimination against Serbs in the area could go as far as it did
during the war time when the Nazi’s Quisling government
slaughtered hundreds[...]is seated in his caravan in a break between shots
at the location ofa specially built churchjust west of the seaside
town of Zadar:

The result of that first encounter with the barricades was that
several members of the crew got scared and left. We had to make
a decision whether to continue with the production or not. So we
talked with our co—producers in Paris, Belgrade and Zagreb and
decided to stop the shooting for 10 days until after the elections
were finished.

The wait paid off and the production, financed by Rajko
Grlic’s an[...]

Virdjincz »A Kind ofWoman is a story based on an old tradition in
the Balkans where, if too many girl-children are born to a single
family with no male heir, then the next-born girl has to grow up and
live her whole life as a man. She must carry the secret to the grave
or bring shame on the whole family and death to herself. Such
children were known as virdjinas. Karanovic:

It is ironic we are shooting the film under these conditions, political
conditions which seem to threaten the independence of the individual.
Virdjina is about the freedom of the individual to choose whatever he or
she wants to be, even though the idea is presented in extreme terms.
Broadly speaking it is an apt metaphor for the human condition.

But it has been a long haul to get the production going in the
first place. Karanovic had been kicking the idea around for more
than eight years. Originally it was based on the true story of one
Albanian woman who had had this experience, and the first scripts
focused on her adult life, coming to a head in World War II when,
as a (male) partisan, she falls in love with an allied officer.

The whole war thing made itjust so expensive that we couldn't get the
financing together. So I was forced to re—think— especially since anything
with the war in it is now considered dreadfully dull.

When I was teaching in the States last year, I got to thinking about
how to save the story. It was then this whole child-abuse theme exploded
in the press. I decided to take Virdjina back in to her childhood [at the
turn of the century] and to deal with the years between birth and

adolescence.

Another ir[...]t strife, and even more ofan
oddity in that it is the first such film to receive subsidy money from
the Croatian government. This fact is largely due to Karanovic’s

RIGHT: STEVAN (MARTA KELER), RIGHT, HA5 HER BREASTS BOUND
FOR THE FIRST TIME BY HER MOTHER. AND, THE LAST RITES FOR STEVAN’S
MOTHER., VIRDJINA - A K[...]is own
right, Ra_jk0 Grlic. They studied together at the Prague Film School
and have since collaborated on[...]olidly declares himselfa Yugoslav,
having nothing to do with what Orwell would call “these smelly little
orthodoxies”.

More cash was thrown into the pot by French culture minister
jack Lang’s new fund for the support of eastern European cinema,
and Virdjina was the first to benefit from this.

After the elections Karanovic finally got together with the rebel
Serbs and reached an agreement that would allow them to pass
through the barricades unhindered. The production could go on,
but not without more difficulties: they were further into winter and
the weather became as changeable as the political climate.

When the trouble broke out on day one ofshooting, more than two
thirds of the crew wanted to stay and get on with it, unafraid of the
potential threat. We have Serbs, Croats, Hungaria[...]behaved like a true professional. There are going to be a lot of tears at
the end ofthis shoot. The film is againstall fanatical madness, andl think
that the crew realizes the importance ofthis, here today, and are pulling
th[...]der for it.

Karanovic claims that it is probably the first film he has made that

FACING PAGE: ON LOCATION FOR VIRDJINA - A KIND OF WOMAN AT THE
SPECIALLY BUILT CHURCH BOKM INLAND FROM THE CROATIAN COASTAL TOWN
OF ZADAR.ABOVE: STEVAN’S[...]om
his oeuvre which includes Montréal entry Hard to Swallow (jagode u
grlu, 1985) , Venice selection[...]ta
izmedju, 1983). He concludes wryly:

Ifwe have to speak about the genre, it does correspond to the general
scheme ofwhatl call ‘documentary fairy tales‘, but this one is probably
the toughest, cruellest fairy tale I have yet told. I am sure that Yugoslavia
will find it difficult to take, but it is a universal story. As with many o[...]films, it may have a bigger audience abroad than at home.

With world sales already being handled by UGC (France), some
pre-sales have already been made on the strength of Karanovic’s
track record. And if this track record is anything to go by, the film
is very likely candidate for selection in Competition at Cannes this
year.

SRDJMI KARMIOVIC FIIMOGRAPIIY[...]We Are Filmingl, short); Pronadjite naslov
(Find the Title, short) ;Do1*ucak ( TheBreakfast, short) ;[...]t) 1967-75 Seventy documentaries for Belgrade TV, the best
known being Neobavecno (Miscellany), Nepravd[...]Game, feature) 1974 Pagledaj me,
nevernice (Look at Me, Unfaithful Woman, tele-feature) 1975 Grlom u jagode ( The
Reckless Years, tele—series) 1978 Miris poljskog cueca (The Fragrance of Wild
Flowers, feature) 1980 Petnjin[...]ing In Between, feature) 1985 jagode u grlu (Hard to Swallow, feature)
1988 Za sada bez dolrrog[...]

HIGGINS (BEHIND CAMERA) AND PAT HANNA (CLOSEST TO CAR DOOR). _

26 - CINEMA PAPERS 82

early 1930, Raymond Longford fell in with the small group of passengers ships of this type sometimes carried.

A week or so out to sea, everyone was getting on so well with one and another that, in Longford’s opinion, the

whole affair was becoming quite boring. In an effort to enliven the journey, Longford started circulating various

ru[...]his fellow travellers. Things quickly livened up to the point that when the ship docked in Sydney

no one was talking to anyone.

It is a typical Longford story, though this version does not have the embellishments and theatrical re-

enactments only he could bring to bear when in full flight. It is wrong, however, to assume that the tale is a total

fabrication. At the bottom of every Longford story is an element of truth and the more seemingly outlandish the

story, the closer to fact it is.

RAYMOND HOLLIS LONGFORD
The Man They would Not Hang

For a man who loved to tell a story, there are few like the above about
Raymond Hollis Longford. Somehow, the prominent silent film di-
rector of the early Australian cinema has escaped the anecdotal
remembrances which either enfeeble or engage one’s opinion of
him. And a lot of this lack is due to the story ofRaymond Longford’s
refusing to settle in any one niche. He is no sooner occupying one
place in history than he is moved to another.

Hopefully, every time such a revision occurs, the story of Ray-
mond Longford, his partner Lottie Lyell and the other personalities
who had a part in their lives[...]t what has happened. When film history only grabs the
public’s attention if a past director is having[...]r a flawed reputation, and this has
largely been the case, there is little opportunity to get at any story
through the froth and bubble. The whole thing becomes too
narrow; there are simply too many wheelbarrows to push. What
follows is not so much how the storywas missed, but how a good story
refused to be told.

joining the story in October 1950, Ernest Harrison, writing in A.M.,
‘found’ Longford working as a casual watchman at the ‘deadhouse‘
on the Pyrmont wharves in Sydney. Under the title, “He Invented
theto his then ‘lost’ 1918 silent classic, The SentimentalBloke. The article,
along with Longford, quickly faded from the public mind, but the
beginnings of the Longford myth had been born.

In 1955, a complete 35mm copy of The Sentimental Bloke turned
up, via Melbourne, in some old wooden crates at the National
Library in Canberra. There was now something tangible to hold on
to. Screenings at the Sydney and Melbourne Film festivals soon
afterwar[...]ed few. Les Blake, a teacher
and historian, wrote to Longford asking for details to the making of
The Sentimental Bloke. Larry Lake, partly responsible for getting the
film to the National Library, sought out Longford on the P & O
wharves.‘

It was all too little, too late. By the time of Longf0rd’s death on
2 April 1959 at Waverton, the story was still in fragments. A filmed
interview[...]d in 1958 was mostly erased in an agency mix-
up. The occasional articles published during this time kept up the
tantalizingly, sketchy details. Highlighting Longford’s claim about
beating the Americans by inventing the close-up, or tearing the roof
offa house to be the first person to shoot interior scenes in Australia,
was to print the story before the facts. Still, it was wonderful copy, a

fact which didn’t escape the reporters and papers which ran the
articles, or Longford himself.

All this, ofcourse, was having little effect in the land that has “too
much of sunshine, too much of sky”. Yet the story of Raymond
Longford was growing. Writing in Nation (November 1958), Tom
Weir lamented the lack offilms being produced in Australia. Under
the heading “No Daydreams of Our Own", Weir held up the talent
and achievement evident in Long‘ford’s The Senlimen£alBloke and his
1920 On 0urSeleclion1n stark contrast to the dismal state the industry
had fallen into. A connection and a precedent had been made:
I.ongford’s story was now bound up with the story ofAustralia’s past.
No one was quite sure[...]e
Anthony Buckley’s orjoan Long’s films were to appear, or books by
Eric Reade, Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper, and Graham Shirley. It
was also years away from the country’s being interested in being

Australian[...]ndustry. Longford as myth had taken
a step closer to Longford as icon.

In the 1970s, there was now a film industry with titles like Pure
S..., TheAdventures ofBcmy McKenzie and Picnic at Hanging Rock. The
nuts and bolts of this were “almost entirely the result ofgovernment
subsidy and investment”. The National Library now had a section for
thethe midst of the bustle: it wasn’t clear what the ‘first wave’ had
been about. There had been[...]research done into
Australia’s film past since the dark days in the ’50s, but the history
the headlines were so confidently proclaiming was st[...]m-
piled.

There had been no model, no guide, for the few doing the work.
People had started from what amounted to a blank page. Eric Reade
painstakingly went through issues of the old trade magazines,
Everyones, Film Weekly and Photoplay, in the writing of his 1970 book,
Australian Silen2Films. Ross Cooper found details to film productions
in files held by the NSWPolice Department. Records were either lost
(which implied they could be found if one knew where to look),
destroyed (though itwas never sure whether[...]ost),
incomplete (it is always a peculiar feeling to find the next page ofa
document missing), or biased to the point of inaccuracy (but, as
they were not lost,[...]held in New Zealand, were
somewhat of a find).

The overall problems oftrying to get at a history so far removed
by time, where the people who had made that history were now
gone, scattered or in decline, were making the work difficult. Given
also that research is largely unpaid and done on a part-time basis,
this meant that the pastwhich the current industry was talking about
was not going to happen tomorrow, or next month, or next year. It
was not surprising, then, that the general nature ofthe history being
found h[...]

More of the facts started to catch up to Longford with the
appearance in 1980 of Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper[...]ams. It was, however,_]ohn
Tulloch’s Legends on the Screen, published in 1981, which specifically
took Longford to task. In chapters on Longford and The Sentimental
Bloke, the ‘study’, being more an analysis of the facts than an
historical account, challenged Longford not on the ’50s newspaper
interviews but on Longford’s claims and charges at the 1927 Royal
Commission Into the Moving Picture Industry. Unfortunately, the
academic style ofwriting kept the book from the public. Similarly,
the reference nature of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol-
ume 10,[...]tie Lyell by Mervyn
Wasson, understandably failed to find a wide audience. There was
a growing number[...]but
it fell well short of common acceptance, with the result that Long-
ford‘s legend remained unaltered.

By the middle of the 19805, Longford’s fame had rendered him
invisible. But ifLongford was static, the society and industry around
him had changed. Film schools and the film industry were drawing
women into all aspects of film. It was a reflection on the changing
role ofwomen in the workforce and in society. Increased opportu-
nity[...]nt Careers: Wamen in Aus-
tralian Cinema, were an answer, or answers, to the topical call.
Spanning Australian film history, she focused on a group ofwomen
whose contribution to film had been both before and behind the
camera.

One of these women was Lottie Lyell, Lon[...]lia’s first film star”. Though articles and
the early film books had increasingly noted the partnership between
she and Longford, this emphasis had not made it into the interviews
the newspapers conducted with Longford in the late ’50s. Wright
brought Lyell back from beyon[...]nd individual achievements in film, she stressed the “creative
partnership” between Lyell and Longford being “primarily depend-
ent” on her. Itwas the story of a quiet ‘battler’ thatAustralians always
have time for and the fact that Lyell was a women had contemporary
appeal. The media responded with two filmed dramatizations o[...]articles and some bicentennial madness books.

In the process, the air was taken out of the Longford bubble.
This in itselfwould have had a b[...]had stopped
here. However, opinions have gone on to the point that in some
quarters there seems to be doubt as to whether Longford directed
his own films. Adding to the lack of balance are the ‘gaps’ which are
still present in the Longford story. Clearly, it’s time Longford be
allowed to have parents and a start to life further than a birthdate.
Also, with Lottie[...]ow secure in history, it is time for
another look at Raymond Longford.

RAYMOND HOLLIS LONG-FORD
Begin[...]s father had come south from Sydney some-
time in the 1860s to seek his fortune in the booming colony of
Victoria. He eventually took up his trade and residence in the then
outer Melbourne suburb of Camberwell. There[...], an English governess from Chelsea. Accordingly, at the Regis-

28 - CINEMA PAPERS 82

try Office in Fitz[...]married Charlotte Maria Hollis. Particulars from the marriage
certificate put their ages as 22 and 24[...]y) john, was born soon afterwards.

It is unclear why things went downhill for the Longfords but, by
1877, the family was living in reduced circumstances in the poor
Melbourne suburb ofFitzroy. Longford was no longer following his
trade and had been forced to take on a labouringjob to support the
family. There had also been personal loss. Four children born since
the birth of Monty had not survived, with the most recent, Edward,
dying from diarrhoea in_]uly. The Longfords’ fortunes were at a low
ebb and the lack of adequate sanitation in the suburb ofFitzroy put
the survival of any more new—born children to the Longfords at a
decided risk.

Their luck changed when, on llju[...]appointed an Assistant Inspector of Fisheries for the
Colony ofVictoria. Employed as a ‘supernumerary’, he received half
the annual wage ofa permanentmember of the Civil Establishment
and could be dismissed on a m[...]is little doubt
that Longford had help in gaining the position. With his wife six-
months pregnant, Longford quickly moved the family to the up-
and-coming suburb of Hawthorn.

At 11 pm on 23 September 1878, a son was born at William
Street, Hawthorn, and named after his fat[...]fact, was Raymond Longford.

A short time later, the family moved down to the coastal town of
Paynesville in line with Longford’s duties for the government. By
1880, they were renting a house there. A third son, Victor William,
was born in july and the Longfords were now giving the name of
their second-born as Raymond Longford. Why the parents decided
to change his name, and in doing so chose the name Raymond, is
open to question. However, in an effort to avoid confusion, they may
have decided onejohn Walter was enough and taken the new name
from Raymond Island opposite Paynesville[...]ame as Raymondjohn
Walter Longford. But on taking to the stage as an actor, sometime
around 1905, he took[...]was asentimental man and his
mother did live into the 1920s, but his adoption of the Hollis name
was largely for stage effect.

Ray’[...]y became a clerk and
accountant. Being old enough to recognize the family’s hard times
in Fitzroy, his choice ofa[...]His earliest memories would
have been travel and the sea. He was never to be very worried by
money. In this light, Longf0rd’s 1958 comment that “as a young
fellow I had been apprenticed in sail”, and continued to be a seaman
into his twenties, makes sense given[...]g. Whatever his father’s failings, he possessed the
natural intelligence to pick up the skills necessary to perform his
duties as an Assistant Inspector. In[...]ymond also remember him as enjoying a
good read.

The quiet life in Paynesville endedwith Longford snr’s losing his
position with the Department of Trade and Customs on 31 October
1880. His loss of employmentwas one of the drawbacks to being a
‘supernumerary’ in the Civil Establishment. Shrinking economic
prospects in Victoria and the promise of stabler government in New
South Wales persuaded the Longfords to mfive to Sydney. In the
early ’8©s, they took a coastal ferry u[...]

CINE[...]

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LONGFORD’S THE DINKUM BLOKEU922), WITH NELL GARVIN (LOTTIE LYELL) AND PEGGY GARVIN (BERYL GOW). THE FILM TEAMED LYELL AGAIN WITH ARTHUR
TAUCHERT AS THE HUSBAND AND WIFE. LOTTIE LYELL AS THE MAORI GIRL, WITH JIM AND THE PRIEST IN LONGFORD'S A MAORI MAlD’S LOVE(I9I6). LOGO OF THE PRODUCTION COMPANY
FORMED BY LONGFORD AND LYELL.[...]ORNE), RIGHT, WITH MAID IN LONGFORD AND LYELL’S THE BLUE MOUNTAINS MYSTERY (I921). FILMING ONE OF THE
AUSTRALIA CALLS SERIES OF FILMS FOR THE COMMONWEALTH GOVERNMENT IN ‘I923. LONGFORD IS SECOND FROM RIGHT, NEXT TO LYELL. LACEY PERCIVATLTIS BEHIND THE CAMERA.

30 « CINEMA PAPERS 81

LOTTIE LYELL

With the appearance of Brilliant Careers by Andrée Wright[...]s
stated previously, Lyell had been known only as the female lead in
nearly all of Longford’s films.[...]ong, writing in
Lumiere (October 1972), in one of the few articles expressly about
Longford, talked about the “close working relationship" between
Lyell and[...]ut this on record himself”.
This is quite true. At the 1927 Royal Commission Into the Moving
Picture Industry, Longford in his opening statement to the Commis-
sion had said:

I first entered the motion picture industry in Australia seventeen years
ago in conjunction with my partner, the late Miss Lottie Lyell [RCE
1927, page 144]

Longford was also on record about his ‘partner' through the
trade press of the time. In a quote Wright also cites, Longford had
stated:

I’ll be glad when Miss Lyell is with the company again. She understands
work through and through, and is a great help to me. [Brilliant Careers,
p. 8; first appearing in Picture Show, 1 March 1921.]

However, the intervening sixty years had washed away these
comments. Using the facilities of the newly-created National Film
and Sound Archives, d[...]eers not only rediscovered Lottie Lyell, but
took the notion ofa partnership between Lyell and Longford[...]Longford's story is a moving one, it is only half
the story ofa creative partnership /nrmmr/\' [my emphasis] dependent on
the considerable talents of Lottie Lyell. [Brilliant Careers, p. 14]

Even given all of the book's hard-won research, it was an
interpretation of the facts, from an interpretative history. As Wright
points out:

I make no apology for the fact that the work of men like Raymond
Longford is explored primarily in relation to the women they worked
with. Although each receives here his most extensive treatment to date,
it is not the place of the first book devoted to women in Australian
cinema to write the definitive history of men’s achievements in the
medium of film. [Brilliant Careers, p. xi.]

This aspect of Wright’s work seems to have escaped general
notice. Openly declaring in the “Preface” one’s bias as Wright has
done, instead ofinsidiously hiding it away, is very honest. But in the
case of Brilliant Careers, its interpretative vie[...]rough film dramatizations of Lyell and passed on to the
public as definitive.

One of Wright’s assertio[...]person and this virtue had kept her from getting the credit she
deserved. There is another view to this claim. Lyell started her stage
career with a[...]en she was l8years old. She made her screen debut at 21 ,
when she appeared in Longford’s first film, The Fatal Wedding? As
early as March 1918, she was billed or allowing herself to be billed
as “Australia’s Film Star” (advertisementfor The Woman Suflersin The
Advertiser, Adelaide, 23 March 1918) . This was beforethe huge success
of The Sentimental Bloke. In terms of public profile, it was Lyell whose
face was appearing before the public and whose name enjoyed top

.billing.

In an interview with Sheila Higgins, the wife of the late Arthur
Higgins who was director of photograp[...]ay around her little finger” and usually did so to “get her way”? It
is both true and applaudable that Lyell in her interviews with the
press never engaged in exaggeration, but how “modest” this very
public person was is another matter.

The saga of Longford’s reputation did not end with Lottie Lyell.
Largely on the suggestion of French filmmaker and activist Pierre
Rissient, The Sentimental Bloke was shown at the Cannes Film Festival
in 1987. The Newsletter for the National Film and Sound Archives
noted, “It was the first time Cannes had honoured an early film-
maker in this way. ” It added that due to_the film’s good reception the
Archive had been invited “to exhibit Australian archival film in
festivals in Italy, Spain and the U.S.".

There is a great deal ofirony in this bel[...]s notice, as
Longford had made exaggerated claims to greatness in the 19505
and before. There is also a certain amount of truth to this reputa-
tion. Longford was an Australian, wh[...]ity as an independent filmmaker, as President of the
Australian Motion Picture Producers’ Association and, later, as
President of the New South Wales Talking Picture Producers’
Asso[...]nal status as
a filmmaker has remained cloudy by the lack of research done into
Australian films over[...]further rumours
of releases in Canada, India and the US It is known that The Blue
Mountains Mystery, co—directed with Lyell, seems to have obtained
some sort of general release in Ame[...]Longford credit for
having made one great film, The Sentimental Bloke, and a very good
film in his On 0urSeleetion, mostly on the strength ofcopies for both
films having survived into modern times. Until more is known of
how well I.ongford’s films travelled internationally, tag[...]ers little that Longford came out of
obscurity in the 1950s, became a symbol for Australia’s past in the
’70s, got attacked in the ’80s and seems destined to vanish in ’90s.
What is unfortunate is that most of the story remains untold. For
people like Longford, Lottie Lyell and Arthur Higgins, who created
some of the first and enduring images ofAustralia and Australians,
its a poor end.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to pay thanks to the family ofthe late Mervyn]. Wasson. By their
generosity, access was granted to Wasson's twenty years of research into the Raymond
Longford story, including Longford’s scrapbooks. Without this assistance, I would still
be a long way from what Wasson called “the whole stoiy". At the time of his sudden
death, Wasson was writing a bi[...]manuscript appeared in Cinema Pa/)ersNo. 46 under the title “The Woman
Suffers, Why Ever Was She Banned".

All photos are courtesy of the Wasson estate.

1 Information taken from letter to Mervyn Wasson.
2. Sources: The Theatre Magazine, ljuly 1913; Longford scrapbooks[...], editors Nairn and Serle; letters from Mr L. Fry to
author; letter and conversations with Mr T. 0. Davis to author; conversations with Mr
_]. Armstrong, vice[...]rary; Performing Arts Museum, Victoria Centre for the Arts.

CINEMA PAPERS 82 - 31

Buflget tslfisillet set in the Australian flesent —

and a Bnoiilieta wanking as a film iiinancier in
Lnnislon. lllfie I est, fie tfiougfit. woulfl Be a gieee oléealie.
Wmng. Evexagone seemeiél toat tlie last mo-
ment Slyzklnegg-liasefl eget

I[...]meone in tlie sy stem Moulizil
nulfir it anii we'i:l Be back wlierr we started.

‘Earget, Elie He[...]l in
tlie ‘ Enialer tlie financing agreement, the
Has a 65 get cent shame in tlie Erojet-1:’, xetains televisi[...]lial lie is amazefl How little
time it toolé ta get Backsliiiing into Rnoiiueiiou:

We were velgyluck[...]ar. a xgecora time for mass
features.

filming a Ifimuflbn-fiasefl venljm-e eagitallst £431: a[...]lzlier, But fiaxzget aiétrilfiutes tile smoofli-running ofi
die slibot to His gtzoaueer Sue

Sue , wlio sgedzlizes in lielging new direc tors get started,
suxsmunfleil me mlli a no-liawle crew w[...]nflwlio wax-lie?! with Iiorfific efifieienc-g. I ms
texififiea ufi sleegmg in, in use I anivefl late an?! Eounfl
tliegil sfiat Elie wfiole fliing witfiout me.

‘e ESE-ggean-ulfl Tacget also Eas nine toifleas”, lie sfiél.

"" "'ngg;.ls.a sums Gfl[...]nee liaiil Been gainefl maléing
twumenmlzies fiat: anii televisiofi.
ms nefieammg a= gmgxzaim[...]sumseunilefl
fieagle lie eoul’”’c?ln’t get an M/£1213:

I was stlzanflefl cm a gxrogezztg in thsemaslé Queenslanfl £61;
mm weeks Waiting £0: to fie meliame. Tlie
manager coal? 2 aislilée tn m[...]itmgs fife

MAIN EIES, TOE T0 BOHGME TOM MlHl'I1'ON (TIM RBTH, I
SVNIGIIS ENGBSHMRN WHO HAS ISIED TO GET THE IOU
A REMOTE GAS STATION RUN BY TWO IORN-AGAIN[...]WHOM SHE HQBES Vlllili IRON
HER ERIENDAHSON TENDS THE SUNIURNT SKIN A
HEIIND (EIIM HOI':'l'<) AFTER HE HAS SEENT HON
IN THE DESERT. UPPER RIGHT: TOM IND IEISQN Lflfili GM
IN DISBEEIEF IS THE PASTOWS ELKNE CRKSHES. §lMO,|§|:’=
TARGETS DAEKSHDINO. IOWER RIGHT; THE GREW EIEMS

ms szoumcs or m: PASTOIPS PLANE. mvw folffllfli‘

IS AT THE GAMER‘ ON THE LEET, DIREETGR OE PHOTO-
GRAPH¥ TOM COWAN THE HAND-I-IEID CWERI DH
RIGHT. DIREQOR SIMON TARGET HES ON THE GRQDBID.

7 DECEMBER 1.980, SUNNY VON BIILOW,

-[...]OCRAT CLAUS VO BIJLOW, W.A_S
FOUND UNCONSCIOUS ON THE FLOOR
OF THE MARBLED AND FREEZING
BATHROOM OF HER PI%IVATE SUITE
AT THE VON Bl:lLOWS' MANS:-ION IN
NEWPORT, RHODE lS_Ll\ND. RUSHED

TO A HOSPITAL, SH/E LAPSED INTO _A
DEEP COMA,[...]

chambermaid, Maria, are extremely suspicious of Claus. They
hire private detectives to look into the matter. One year earlier
Sunny had lapsed into a[...]le as this
one, but had recovered. Now, they want to prove that Claus has been
trying to murder Sunny for a long time, with injections of insulin.

Brought to trial under a barrage of media attention, Claus V[...]d guilty of murder in 1982. He immediately enrols the
services of Alan Dershowitz, a star lawyer known[...]dants. Against all expectations, Dershowitz takes the case and,
in less than a year, manages to accomplish the almost impossible: he
and his crew of law student[...]ble mediafrenzy, Claus Von Bfilow marches out of the Rhode
Island Supreme Court a free, innocent man.[...], is a desperate, manic-depressive Sunny,
who, in the most outrageous narrative device since Sunset Bou[...]deftly employing three distinct narrative styles to construct what he
calls “a puzzle”: Who’s i[...]rtune is Schroeder’s
second American film, and the first after Barfly. Born in Teheran in
1941 of G[...], Schroeder defines himself as “someone who is at home
everwhere — and nowhere. There is no place in the world thatl can
say I come from."

sunny’s son, Alex, and daughter, Ala, as well as her faithful

The Claus Von Biilow casewas, at leastin the U.S., an extremelywell-
known — in fact, over-p[...]u concerned that
this could affect your vision of the story, or the public reaction to it?

No. For me the fact that it’s known is not really important. In every
movie I’ve done, I have dealt with real characters. All the heroes in
my movies existed in reality. The only difference here is that they
were actually having their own names.

When I make a movie, I have to hope that it is not only ood
enough for me, but good enough to be playing twenty years from
now. By then, the public will have forgotten completely the real
characters and it will have to stand on its feet.

One thing that amuses me is t[...]n
Bfilow is remembered, he will be remembered as the fictional Von
Bulow of the movie, not as the real person.

What interested you more in this: the moral dilemma, the courtroom
drama or the whodunit?

Well, many things many things. The main element was the fact
that it was written by Nick Kazan. I don’t think I would have done it
if this subject had been written by somebodyl didn’t admire as much

as Nick.
The other thing, of course, is the story itself. In 1981, Iwas trying
to make Bmfly, and I started doing something thatl had never do[...]

before, which is to collect clippings. But there was something about
this case which was interesting to me, partly because I knew a little
bit about that world.

However, once I had cut those things out, I decided there was no
wayamovie could be done about it because how could you haveVon
Bfilow as a hero? So, I gave up on the idea of a movie. Then later,
when Nick was doing the screenplay, I saw he was taking the
direction of having the lawyer as the hero. That was a brilliant idea
and the only way of entering the story.

There were other reasons, too, such as discovering how the legal
process works outside of theto make movies at the time. So I said, “Okay, now
we’re going to do an Anatomy, the same thing about the law, but
outside the courtroom.” Anatomy of a Murderis the best courtroom
drama I’ve seen. And all the criminal lawyers who have seen the
movie said it is the first movie that was honest to their work.
Otherwise when they see Hollywood movies they scream; they don’t
recognize the way they work at all.

Did you ever meet Von Biilow?

No. I had such a precise idea of the character that I was afraid that
in meeting him I’d be disappointed or have another idea to the one
in my mind, or I would suddenly decide that this man was absolutel[...]verything. In that case, there would be no moviel Why
make a movie about someone unjustly accused?

Has Von Biilow expressed an opinion on the making of the movie?

I don‘t know even if he has seen the movie, because he's been in
London all this time[...]as only been one or two screenings
in London. But I know he wasn’t there.

How did you come to the conclusion thatjeremy Irons was the actor
to play Von Biilow?

It is quite simple. Normally to cast Von Bulow, you would imagine
someone Germani[...]’s some bad German.”
There is this cliché of the bad, nasty German. Yet when I started
I looking into Von BL"1low’s life, I discovered he had come to London
at the age of seven, That started me thinking: maybe we[...]ambiguity and play him as somebody who is trying to be
British instead of some German aristocrat. Of course, as soon as you
open that door, you come to the greatest British actor alive,]eremy
Irons.

I think it was the most incredible injustice that he didn’t get
nominated forDead Ringers. That for me was a hist[...]n did you have of Von Bulow? Did you direct Irons
to play him as this cool, detached, aloof, cynical man?

Iwrote a poem about the character of Von Bfilow, describing the
traits that were essential to the character. It was done in the first
person, as Von Bulow would describe himself. At one point he
speaks of himself as a free spirit, a libertine or libertinin the French
tradition of the 18th Century. Ultimately, nothing for him had any[...]. From that point on we
discovered slowly who was the character. >

LEFT: on cLAus VON aL‘JLow: "MAYBE wE CAN PLAY HIM A5 soMEBoDY WHO Is
TRYING To BE nmsn INSTEAD or SOME GERMAN ARISTOCRAT. or COURSE, As soon
As You OPEN THAT book, You coME TO THE onurasr BRITISH ACTOR ALIVE, JEREMY
IRONS." RIGHT: on SUNNY VON BULOW: "to MAKE THAT PERSON coME ALIVE
DEMANDS A DEVASTATING PERFORMANCE BY AN ACYRESS so wuo ARE THE BEST
ACTRESSES IN AMERICA room? wE WERE LU[...]

BELOW: CLAUS AND SUNNY: "BASICALLY, THE MOVIE IS A PUZZLE."
FACING PAGE: CLAUS VON BI:|LO[...](ANNABELLA SCIORRAJ. REVERSAI. OF FORTUNE.

l .

I only “directed”_]eremy when he was doing something out of

character, which didn’t happen very often. To give you an example,
Jeremy has a natural tendency to walk in a very nonchalant way; he’s
very soft a[...]is scene
where Claus is walking down a street and I said, “No, no, no. It has
to be a military walk. You have to be somehow military, with an
internal discipline that shows.”

Most of the time, though,jeremy had it all figured out and h[...]se as Surmy — a tricky part, since she
narrates the film from her coma bed — and Ron Silver as Von B1'1low’s
attorney, Dershowitz?

The Sunny Von Bulow part was very, very difficult. To make that
person come alive on screen, to make you feel for that person,
demands a devastat[...]n actress. So, in a sense, it
was simple. Who are the best actresses in America today? We were
lucky Gl[...]n Silver, we considered many possibilities but in the
end he really was the best, the one with the most energy. At one
point, we could have gone and made the movie without him — we
had all the money- but we decided we’d wait the three months until
he was free. He really was the best solution.

Your film actually looks like thr[...]tyles. Can you explain that a little?

Basically, the movie is a puzzle, and it has three different styles or
main elements ofnarration. One part is the present, the immediacy
of life — thats the lawyer Dershowitz with his students and Von
Bulow. At this level you shouldn’t feel that you’re watching a movie;
it should be like life. That's the idea, the style.

Now, there is another level which is what[...]- CINEMA PAPERS B2

flashbacks, which are set in the
past, in Clarendon [the Von
Bulows’ manor in Newport],
with different versions of what
happened. Now, I don’t call
them flashbacks, I call them
movies — Maria’s movies, Von
Bfilo[...]is
narrating has a theory about
what happened in the past.

At this level, I wanted the
audience to feel that they were
at the movies, that they were in
the middle of a fiction. So you
have film music like in the old
Hollywood movies. You never
have that in the rest ofthe film,
where the music is always source
music; it feels like it’s part of
life and not coming from the
sky or from the speakers in the
back of the theatre. At this level,
the camera movement is always
dramatic, not always justified
by the movement of the actors.
You really should have the feel-
ing that you are in the movies
and, as reference, I used the
melodramas of the 1950s.

The third style is Sunny narrating. We had Sunny narrating
because we wanted to be as close as possible to her. When you read
the news about the case in the paper, she was always left out. In the
movie, we wanted to be close to her and discover what really
happened in this marriage that was falling apart. So we have her
narrating the story.

Now, she’s narrating from a coma. That[...]or less, we
can imagine her soul is floating in the room. That gave me the idea
of this hovering camera, constantly moving about and very often
high up. In the opening shots, you have the shot from the helicopter
that actually represents this soul of Sunny floating around. Even
when you enter the hospital, its always floating a little above the
scene. So, the third style is a little surreal.

In a sense, you are blending the styles of a fiction film and a
documentary, and you have done both in your career. Where do you
draw the line between documentaries and fiction?

I did a documentary on Idi Amin Dada that was actually fiction, but
the fiction was created by Idi Amin Dada. It was a s[...]and whatever fiction there was was introduced
by the character who was the subject of the documentary.

Now, I’ve done only two documentaries and six feature films, so
my field is mostly features, but I try to introduce fiction in the
documentary and documentary in the fiction.

For me, every great fiction movie has a documentary in it. This
is what André Bazin, the great theoretician of film, once said. Even
if y[...]s a documentary on an actor doing his monologue.

I’m excited by the things that come from life and not from the
imagination of a screenplay writer, because life[...]an become very
boring and needs some editing. But the inspiration comes from life,
yes, always.

Bazin, the great theoretician of film, once said. Even if yo[...]g his monologue.”

Which of your eight films is the most personal for you?

Very frankly, Iwould say none of them is personal except maybe the
first [Mom 1969]. One always says that the first book or first film is
slightly autobiographical, but I don’t consider my films personal in
the sense that I’m not talking about myself. I’mjust curious about
exploring various subjects through movies and through drama.

Is that the reason why you studied philosophy?

N0, merely because that was the most interesting thing. I still read
a lot of philosophy, but I didn't go very far at university because it
looked too much like school. I thought it was going to be different,
but it wasn’t. I was more interested in movies and actually I left — for
India. I was supposed to be pre-production assistant for Fritz Lang,
but it didn’t work out because the film was cancelled. I ended up
doing some photographs instead — and this was when Iwas supposed
to be in university. So, you see, I was more interested in movies.

Did any filmmaker in particular influence your work or your deci-
sion to become a filmmaker?

Influence, I don’tknow. I know people I like, butl don’tknow ifthey
have influenced me. Maybe Rossellini is the only one that can almost
talked of as an influence. And I’m not the only one: all the French
New Wave comes out of Rossellini. And I’m not the French New
Wave. I’m like the post-New Wave, but still Rossellini is there. And
also Nicholas Ray, who was a close friend of mine.

I started looking at movies at the age offourteen and something
very interesting happened: I knew more about the work of Raoul
Walsh and Howard Hawks and Minnelli than about Shakespeare. I
had to catch up with the rest ofthe culture later. Butl discovered the
world through cinema and mostly through the great classical Ameri-
can cinema.

Is Charles Bu[...]e and he’s a very
dear friend. Iwill always try to be as close as possible to him because

he’s an incredible lesson and an i[...]r refreshing, coming from a film that
dealt with the low-life, Barfly, to do a film like Reversal of Fortune,
concerned mainly with the high life?

Iwas very happy because the idea was to be able to show, hopefully,
that the human misery is everywhere, that the human condition is
everywhere. Of course, there is the line in Barflyabout “nobody suffers
like the poor”, but still the failure ofa marriage the failure of
a life. You can always identify with Von Bulow and Sunny when they
are arguing in bed — the heart of that argument you can find in the
middle class, in the poor people, everywhere. The misery is still
there.

Earlier in this conversation you said that you knew something of the
world in which the Von Bulows live. How is this world? Is it true, as
Scott Fitzgerald said, that the rich are different?

I think there is a curse on them. There are people[...]welve hours a day, who care about their work, but I’m
talking about the idle rich. And, yes, there is some kind of curse
because they end up not having to pay for anything. I’m using an
excessive formula, but there is some truth to this. And so a drama
there can take more tragic overtones.

If you look at the story of the daughter of Onassis, for example,
you find out t[...]ma that enters her life when things
go wrong. And the one thing that you know is that things somehow
do[...]ent of self-destruction
because they don’t have to fight for survival. They sometimes end up
using[...]smopolitan filmmaker. Where is it easier,
better, to work: Europe or America?

The Americans are more serious and more professional[...]ctors know their lines better. That’s basically the difference —
in general, of course. Otherwise,[...]aifly

1990 Reversal ofF01'tune

AS PRODUCER

I965 Paris Vu Par

1966 La Collectioneuse[...]

1

\\
\,

he apocalypse-sodden

‘ last “Technicalities" was

influenced by my attend-

ance at the Ausgraph 90 show. The Australian

Computer Graphics Association’s bi-annual event

was biased in emphasis this year to creative image

creation. This was in contrast to the probably

more substantial areas of Computer Aided De-
sign (CAD) and manufacturing.

In the conference papers, there were still
sizable dollops of (to me) arcane subjects such as
“A Topology of Visualization Algorithms in the
Volume and Surface Domains” and “Boolean
Oper[...]tions of
Solids Using n—Manifold Geometry", but the ma-
jority of overseas guests was interested in the
presentation of graphics and film as art or enter-
tainment. The hand of the tireless Paul Brown
(ex-Swinburne, now RMIT) was also evident in a
season at the State Film Centre of the best com-
puter film and video features and docu[...]ions, art installations and per-
formances around the city by people such asjill
Scott, it was obvious that soon we are going to
have to face a few new issues in our narrow
definition of cinema.

The first is, I venture: Is projected video
cinema? Are we too pr[...]our “Cinema " Papers?) Ifwe are. something
has to change in how we approach the work ofthe
computer—graphics artists because the issue is

40 - CINEMA PAPERS 82

G, Pure Virtue[...]olution computer graphics are
not video as we use the term in talking about
television. They can use a[...]ojectors, and are suc-
cessfullybeing transferred to high-resolution film.
(Tin Toywon an Oscar in 19[...]ion for cinemas.

Does “cinema" mean sitting in the dark in a
theatre watching a large (projected) screen im-
age in the company of more people than you
could fit in your living room? Or is itjust as much
the video projector in the Gallery at Davidjones
showing the work of William Latham to a crowd of
shoppers sitting on the carpet floor?

3-D (as in two—dimensional repr[...]ts, not “stereo 3-D") computer images
represent the first form ofmotion animation that
doesn’t use the camera as an essential part of the
process of translating frame—by—frame—creat[...]tion. Drawing directly on film is
another moth—to—the-lightargument that is talked
about in the Cantrills piece below; itjust confuses
the issues, whether you use sticky-tape or a laser.

And the quality of these fabricated images is
approaching Realism or at least Photo-realism,
while simultaneously diverging into other reali-
ties of their own making (again the example of
Bill Latham’s Hornweb sculptures come to mind).
The backstage gossip of the guest speakers from

It is virtually real but is[...]million dollar
George Lucas feature thatwas going to use “a lot”
of computer-generated images. Sco[...]trial Light 8c Magic showed his com-
puterwork on the watercreature for The/lbyssand
made it sound deceptively easy, explaining how
they created a realistic image of the water crea-
ture in a relatively short time after several at-
tempts to use conventional special effects failed
to produce successful results.

It will not remain the domain of science-
fiction genre films. It will[...]it is already very moving Art.

SGULPTING CINEMA

The role of the Computer Graphics Artist—in-
Residence has been an enlightened and accepted
tradition with the big companies involved in com-
puter research. Wi[...]rint-making and hand-drawn animation in
1984while at the Royal College ofArt, and evolved
a set of rules t[...]one, sphere,
cube, cylinder and torus). These are the basic
building blocks for computer modelling, a r[...]ntific
computer images in journals from SIGGRAPI-I.
He had tried to sculpt in plastic and wood some of
his evolutionary images, but found the process
slow and restricting. In computers he found away

to work at great speed as the computer is a tireless
construction slave capable[...]work all day, all night and allweekend executing the
sculptures. "

A Research Fellowship at the IBM UK Scien-
tific Centre in 1987 has led to the final results that
were shown at Ausgraph 90. Latham's The Con-
quest of Farm is a feast of movement and mat[...]cognizable surfaces, tex-
tures and organic forms to impossible Escher-like
twists of perception. Latham acknowledges his
interest in Alien and Aliens, the Gothic qualities in
Heavy Metal music, and the work of the Surreal-
ists and Russian Constnictivists, all of[...]his work. But it doesn’t mean that he is trying
to recreate reality; in fact, he says, “The machine
has given me freedom to explore and create
complex three-dimensional forms which previ-
ously had not been accessible to me, as they had
been beyond my imagination."

His aim, he states,

Is not to simulate or copy natural forms such as
bacteria, viruses, orchids, starfish, sea anemones
and lobsters which I have seen in great detail in
scientific journals, but to create forms that do not
exist in the real world. Myinterest in natural forms

NUMBER 2 (APRIL 1974):

Ce[...]Roeg, Sandy Harbutt, Film under Allende,
Between The Wars, Alvin Purple

NUMBER 3 (JULY 1974):

Richar[...]apadopolous,
Willis O‘Brien, William Friedkii1, The True
Story OfEsleimo Nell.

NUMBER 10 (SEPT/OCT 1[...]obb, Samuel Z.
Arkoff, Roman Polanski, Saul Bass, The
Picture Show Mfl7l.

NUMBER 12 (APRIL 1977)

Ken[...]o Tosi, John
Dankworth, Johi1 Scott, Days OfHope,
The Getting Of Wisdom.

NUMBER 13 ( JULY 1977)

Louis[...]r,
Terry Jackman, John Huston, Lul2e’s
Kingdom, The Last Wuve, Blue Fire Lady.

NUMBER 15 (JANUARY 19[...]rancois TrutTaut, John
Faulkner, Stephen Wallace, the Taviani
brothers, Sri Lankan cinema, The
Irishman, The Chant Of]imnzie
Bloclzsmith.

NUMBER 16 ( APRIL-J[...]lom, John Duig-an, Steven
Spielberg, Tom Jeffrey, The Aflicu Project,
Swedish cinema, Duwn/, Pntriclz.[...]le Huppcrt, Brian May,
Polish cinema, Neivsfront, The Night The
Prowler.

NUMBER 18 (OCT/NOV 1978)
John Lamond, S[...]nalism,
Japanese cinema, Peter Weir, Wuter Under

The Bridge.

..o._...

‘ I {uni Il!l.l

....< -«

IIIII lII(lI
.. __,..-._.».-at

."F‘2.°[-

A

NUMBER 27 (JUNE-JULY 1980)
Rand[...]ka, Stephen Wallace, Philippine
cinema, Cruising, The Ltzst Outluw.

NUMBER 36 (FEBRUARY 1982)
Kevin Do[...]hael Rubbo, Blow Out,
Breulzer Morunt, Body Heat, The Man
From Snowy River.

NUMBER 37 (APRIL 1982)
Ste[...]r,
Norwegian cinema, National Film
Archive, We Of The Never Never.

NUMBER 40 (OCTOBER 1932)

Henri Saf[...]Wendy Hughes, Ray Barrett, My
Dinner With Andre, The Return Of
Cuptuzn Invincible.

NUMBER 41 (DECEMBE[...]der, Peter
Tammer, Liliana Cavani, Colin Higgins,
The Teur Of Living Dangerously.

NUMBER 42 (MARCH 198[...]an Pringle,
Agnes Varda, copyright, Strihehounrl, The
Mun From Snowy River.

NUMBER 43 (MAY/JUNE 1933)

Sydney Pollack, Denny Lawrence, Graeme
Clifford, The Dismissal, Cureful He Might
Hear You.

NUMBER 44-[...]vall, Jeremy Irons, Eureka
Stoclzdde, Waterfront, The Bay In The
Bush,A Wornun Suflers, Street Hero.

NUMBER 4[...]ael Pattinson, Jan
Sardi, Yoran1 Gross, Bodyline, The Slim
Dusty Movie.

NUMBER 49 (DECEMBER 1984)

Ala[...]Borowczyk, Peter Schreck, Bill Conti,
Brian May, The Last Bastion, Bliss.

NUMBER 51 (MAY 1985)

Lino[...]i
Hazlehurst, Dusan Makavejev, Emoh Ruo,
Winners, The Naked Country, Mad Max:
Beyond Thunderdome, Rohhe[...]turica,
New Zealand film and television, Return

To Eden.

NUMBER 54 (NOVEMBER 1985)
Graeme Clilford,[...]man, Menahem Golan, rock videos,
Wills And Burke, The Great Bookie
Rohhery, The Lancaster Miller Affair.

NUMBER 55 (JANUARY 1986[...]ul Verhoeven, Derek
Meddings, tie—in marketing, The light-
H/znd Mun, Birdsville.

NUMBER 56 (MARCH 1[...]ard—Smith, John Hargreaves, Dead-
End Drive-In, The More Things Change,
Ktmgdroo, Tracy.

NUMBER 58 (JULY 1986)

Woody Allen, Reinhard Hauff, Orson
Welles, the Cinématheque Francaise, The
Fringe Dwellers, Great Expectations: The
Untold Story , The Last Frontier.

NUMBER 59 (SEPTEMBER 1986)

Robert Altman, Paul Cox, Lino Brocka,
Agnes Varda, The AFI Awards, The
Movers.

NUMBER 60 (NOVEMBER 1986)
Australian Tel[...]conference, production
barometer, film finance, The Story Of
The Kelly Gang.

NUMBER 63 (MAY 1987)

Gillian Armstr[...]ris
Haywood, Elmore Leonard, Troy
Kennedy Martin, The Sacrifice, Landslides,
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,[...], James Clavden,
Video, De Laurentiis, New World, The
Navigator, Who’s That Girl.

NUMBER 67 (JANUARY[...]eorge Miller, Jim
Jarmusch, Soviet cinema— Part I, women
in film, shooting in 70mm, filmrnaking
in Ghana, The Tear My Voice Brolze,
Send A Gorillu.

NUMBER 68[...]ven, John Waters,
Al Clark, Shame Screenplay Part I.

NUMBER 71 (JANUARY 1989)

Yahoo Serious, FFC, David Cronenberg,
The Year in Retrospect, Film Sound — the
sound track, Young Einstein, Shout, The
Last Temptation of Christ, Salt Sulivu
Sperm und[...]Calm,
Franco Nero, Jane Campion, Ian Pringle’s
The Prisoner of St. Petershurg, Frank
Pierson — Scriptwriter, Australian films

at Cannes, Pay TV.

NUMBER 74 (JULY 1989)

The Delinquents, Australians in Holly-
wood, Chinese[...],
Yuri Sokol, Twins, True Believers, Ghosts...
of the Civil Dead, Shame screenplay.

NUMBER I23 AUTUMN I985

The 1984 Women’s Film Unit, The Films
of Solrun Hoaas, Louise Webb, Scott
Hicks,[...]een Gorris, Daniel Petrie,

Larry Meltzer

NUMBER I25 SPRING I935
Rod Webb, Marleen Gorris, Ivan Gaal,
Red Matilolas, Sydney Film Festival

NUMBER 126 SUMMER 1985/36
The Victorian Women’s Film Unit,
Randelli’s, Laleen Jayamanne, Lounge
Room Rock, The Story of Oberhausen

NUMBER I27 AUTUMN I986
AFTRS reviews, Jane Oehr,

John Hughes, Melanie Read, Philip
Brophy,Gyula Gazdag, C/vile: I-Iasta
Cuando?

NUMBER I23 WINTER I986

Karin Altmann, Tom Cowan, Gillian
Coote, Nick[...]FTRS graduate films, Super 8,

Pop Movie

NUMBER I29 SPRING 1986
Reinhard Hauff, 1986 Sydney Film
Fe[...], Public
Television in Australia, Super 8

NUMBER I30 SUMMER I986/87

Sogo Ishii, Tom Haydon, Gillian Leahy,
Tom[...]son,
Super 8, Camera Natura

NUMBER 75 (SEPTEMBER I989]

Sally Bongers, The Teen Movie,
Animated, Edens Lost, Mary Lambert an[...]land, Frank Howson, Ron Cobb.

NUMBER 77 (JANUARY I990)

Special John Farrow profile, Blood Oath,
De[...]y,
“Crocodile” Dundee overseas.

NUMBER ‘I31 AUTUMN I987

Richard Lowenstein, New Japanese
Cinema, Ken[...]land
Cinema, David Cliesworth,

NUMBER 133 SPRING I987

Wim Wenders, Solveig Dommartin, The
Films ofl/Vim Wenders, ]ean—Pierre Gorin,
Miche[...]Lee, Jonathan
Dennis, Super 8

NUMBER 134 SUMMER I987/88
Recent Australian Films, Film Music,
Groucho’s Cigar, Jerzy Domaradzki,
Hong Kong Cinema, The Films ofChris
Marker, David Noakes, 774e Devil in the
Flesh, How the West Was Lost

NUMBER I35 AUTUMN I988

Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Ansara, New
Chinese[...]anese Cinema, Fatal Attraction

NUMBER 136 WINTER I988

Film Theory and Architecture, Victor
Burgin,[...]ion Mini Series, Korean
Cinema, Saininy and Rosie Get Laid I

NUMBER 78 (MARCH 1990)
George Ogilvie’s We Crossing, Ray
Argall’s Return Home, Peter Greenaway

and The Cool, 77ae Tlnef Hz’: Wife and Her

Lover, Mich[...]Hilton and Barlow and Chambers

NUMBER 80 (AUGUST I990)
Cannes report, Fred Scliepisi career
intervie[...]ese Gooafellas,

Alan J. Pakula Presumed Innocent I

(ALSO AVAILABLE

BACK OF BEYOND
DISCOVERING AUSTRALIAN FILM AND TELEVISION

LIMITED NUMBER of the beautifully designed
catalogues especially prepared for the 1988 season of
Australian film and television at the UCLA film and
television archive in thethe Wave;
Ross Gibson, Formative Landscaper, Debi Enk[...]Curiouser and Curiouser; Adrian Martin,
Nurturing the Next Wave.
The Back ofBe3/and Catalogue is lavishly illustrated[...]full credit listings for
some 80 films.

PRICE: The Catalogue price is $24.95, which includes[...]

_ . 6 Issues 12 Issues 18 Issues Back Issues
I wlsh to subscrlbc for 1 Year 2 Years 3 Years Add to Price
6 issues at $21.00 P“ copy
Zone 1: Surface Surface Surface Surface
— 12 issues at $3900 New Zealand 36.00 65.00 97.00 1.20
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48.00 90.00[...]urface Surface Surface
renew my subscription from the next issue
Malaysia 36.00 65.00 97.00 1.20
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ADDITIONAL ITEMS I“°““ A“ A” A" A"
Japan 59.00 112.00 168.00 515
Philippines
I. BACK OF BEYOND: China
DISCOVERING AUSTRALIAN FILM AND TELEVISION
Zone 4: Surface Surface Surface Surface
I to ordcr no_ of copies USA 37.00 67.00 101.00 1.40
E[...]ir Air Air
South America 71.00 136.00 205.00 7.20
I wish to order the following back issues

I: CINEMA PAPERS Issue nos.

IIIII. gI.II MIII. NOW!
C FILMVIEWS Issue nos. 0 I 77:”

NAME

1-2 copies @ $4.50 each
TITLE

3-4[...]s my cheque for $

Cheques should be made payable to:

MTV PUBLISHING LIMITED 0r P163186 debit my
Cl BAN KCARD MASTERCARD VISACARD

and mailed to:
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43 Charles[...]

HORNWEB I, COMPUTER

VIDEO IMAGE BY BILL LATHAM.
RIGHT: SCENE FROM THE ABYSS,
WITH WATER CREATURE DESIGNED
BY SCOTT ANDE[...]tional depar-
ture point. Last year, for example, I produced a
series of impossible double-coiled mus[...]exist in nature.

This rejection ofsimulation of the real world
was also the point of a number of other artists at
Ausgraph. This has been a noticeable change in
how the medium has matured. It seems that the
time and expense of re-creating the visual density
of photographic reality has become[...], for some a dead end.

But, paradoxically, it is the realism of the
visual cues of motion and surface textures that
give the work of artists such as Bill Latham a
fascinating quality. Some of the large, still
Cibachrome images on display in Lath[...]mpkin—like sculptures, which he rec-
ognizes in the catalogue as developing from a
fascination with Halloween pumpkins. There are
just enough suggestions of the real object but
these objects you know could not exist.

Latham thinks of the computer screen as,

Beinglike the mirrorin Alicethroug/L theLookingGlzLr.r,
for it leads to another world, aworld constructed by
the imagination. What I find interesting about
working in this computer s[...]-
rial resistance and time.

This freedom is also the attraction of the
other graphics buzz—of—the-moment that was also
the backstage talk at the Ausgraph show (and in
a lot of the computer and science fan magazines
recently), Virtual Reality. The hand—waving ex-
planation goes (gesture, gestur[...]Put on
your (eventually) lightweight helmet with the
colour LCD display screens, one for each eye, and
put your hands into your data-gloves, atcach the
body sensors to your legs and start your compu-
ter. Presented on the screen will be a true three-
dimensional represen[...]room; as you
turn your head, sensors will detect the movement
and the computer will construct new views. Move
your legs andyou can move around the room and
examine the objects in it, or look out the window.

There are many practical applications to in-
dustry: no more expensive three-dimensional c[...]e can walk around them
with their helmets, sit in the driver’s seat and look
at the dashboard layout; architects can take cli-
ents on a walk through the new building looking
at the features, showing the room lighting condi-
tions for night and day, sum[...]aving and importantapplication
and development of the current 3D graphics
technology. But wait, it gets better.

Now reach out your hand and the sensors in
the glove will detect its position in space and let
you pick up an object in the room, or turn the

door handle and step outside, start the prototype
car you are sitting in and drive off. You can
interact physically with the computer—generated
world around you.

The applications quickly move from industry
to entertainment and the hand waving becomes
more frenetic. Imagine the ultimate video game
where you can walk on alien landscapes, shoot the
locals with your laser and smell them burn. Ifthey
unreasonably fight and hit you in the legs, those
sensors stop working and you have to drag your-
self back to your space ship.

If the bulk of popular cinema is escapist
entertainment, then this is a true alternative to
watch. You could be Mel Gibson's buddy helping
clean up the town, or fiy through your own Never
Ever Ever Ending Story. What about interactive

porno movies? I-Iere, just slip on this data-con-
dom.

It is all possible: already the data glove is
available in a limited form to replace thejoystick
with the Mattel/Nintendo games computers, and
three—dime[...]t needs massive amounts
ofdata and fast computers to make the “Virtual"
Reality realistic enough to be even partly Virtual.

I am not even consideringjoining the Cyber
fanatics, but I can smell the mildew on our insis-
tence on photographic realit[...]stereo sur-
round sound (in selected theatres) as the best
and cheapest way to tell an entertaining story.
There is adefinite crackle ofinevitability in the air
about these developments.

///-T
l 2 .
\ /

\7 /

ith the next is-

sue of Canmlls

Filmnozes, Arthur
and C[...]“experimental” and “independent”. This is the
work of both local and overseas film— and video-
makers, and has been an important part of main-
taining the links in an Australian film culture that
is almost ignored by most magazines.

just acknowledging the magazines impor-
tance is enough reason to mention it here, but, in
keeping with my interest and the “Technicalities”
brief, I am also considering the changes that the
Cantrills have seen and their magazine has docu-
mented in the film and video technology of the
avant-garde in that time.

The magazine appeared at the same time as
the Super 8 format was replacing standard 8mm,
but for the bulk of the film work 16mm still held
its place. The changes since have been the demise
of film stocks and print stocks, with very few
changes in the production tools like cameras. It is

\ (Film) Notes
A on Technology

video that has understandably shown the most
changes. The first mention of video and televi-
sion screen photographs in the magazine were
from a 1/4” reel-to—reel, black-and-white Akai
portapak. That format has gone, along with reel-
to—reel 1/2” and the “portapak" designation.
However, the coverage of video has been deter-
mined by the Cantrills' reservations about the
impact of the medium on that of film and some
significant dev[...]passing.

As always, it is how technology changes the
way we work that is the most interesting factor.
The following filmmakers and topics are selected
from 54 issues of the magazine. I urge people to
look at the back issues for a full examination of
the many more artists than are mentioned here.
Space is the consideration for my selection of
typical examples; the Cantrills know and men-
tioned many more.

In these conversations with the Cantrills, one
of them would often start a comment and the
other elaborate on it, as is often the case in the
film work, so some of these comments are[...]

The Cantrills' motivation for the first issue of the
magazine was partly to document the Expanded
Cinema show, and, as the National Gallery of
Victoria had neglected to print enough pro-
gramme notes to give to people who came to see
it, to disseminate the notes in some form.

“Expanded Cinema" had been applied to
many of the mixed—media events from the 19505
on. Film, music, dance, painting and sculpt[...]as
Stan Vanderbeek’s Moviedromescreenings, and to
the slicker and larger multi-screen presentations
at the World Fairs and Expos.

The screenings took place in The Age gallery
in February 1971. In a three—week period, the
Cantrills drew from their earlier work in Can-
be[...]creens. It all had, as Corinne says, “Very much to
do with analysing the nature ofthe film screen. It
had all been done b[...]seen
it, it is one of those things that you have to do
again for yourself.”

And a large audience did come to see a range
of differentfilm styles projected on[...]of a
boilingjug projected onto other boilingjugs, the
real and projected steam mixing. The sessions
concluded with a number of triptych fil[...]jectors.

Slightly before this gallery screening, the
Cantrills had begun regular Sunday screenings at
a coffee l0unge—art space called The Maze in
Flinders Street. Mixes of media continued, such
as the Videocinemapoetry nightwhere poets such
as Garrie[...]jec-
tions (and often winning).

Arthur mentioned the contribution ofHugh
Mcspeddon, whose light shows[...]. They rather nostalgically
have connections back to l9th—Century magic lan-
terns and resonances th[...]-

42 . CINEMA PAPERS 32

ing and quite thrilling to watch. Hugh is still work-

ing and refining, but doesn’t have as much chance
to publicly perform.

Lynsey Martin was another pers[...]ted
in hancl—made filtns:

\/Vhen you think of the large number of people in
Australia who are working with hand-made films,
the variety of approaches, ideas, obsessions and
tech[...]There are very few
cotrntriesin theworld thathave the body ofinterest—
ing hand—made work that we have in Australia.

It stretches back, Arthur believes,

to Len Lye, who was a New Zealander but studied
animation in Sydney in the l920s. He was really the
father of hand-made film.

In the hand—made film issue, we had everyone
from a c[...]Andrew
Pike on chemical action on film emulsion to par-
ticular things that Albie Thorns and Aggy Read
where doing in Sydney. Overseas we mentioned the
work ofHarry Smith and, ofcourse, Stan Brakhage
w[...]re he sticky-taped insect wings
and [lower petals to the film.

It continues today with the work ofpeople like
Marcus Berger, who is writing[...]cts me
because it is low-tech and an extension of the body
and the ways ofworking with film.

PROJECTION

In the presentation ofindependentfilms, Arthur
believes that the standards of projection have
always been pretty a[...]single-screen;
three-screen projection compounds the prol}
lem. He pointed out an incident at the recent
Experimenta Film festival presentation of a French
two—screen:

We had seen the work earlier in Berlin and it was a
total mess-up at the State Film Centre: they ended
up superimposing the two images and then at the
end of show had to run it again. Things haven’t
changed much since the 1970s.

It is kind of touching how the technology
hasn't changed; there isjtrst a few mo[...]RONT AND BACK COVERS OF

CANTRILL5 FILMNOTES, NO. I, MARCH I97I.
BELOW: IMAGE BY LEN LYE, ”THE FATHER OF
HAND-MADE FILM". REPRODUCED FROM CANTRI[...]71. RIGHT: IMAGES
FROM LYNSEY MARTIN'S WHITEWASH, I969-I973.
REPRODUCED FROM CANTRILLS FILMNOTE5 .

NO. I6, DECEMBER ‘I973.

After giving screenings all over the world for more
than twenty years, the amount of damage and
scratching of prints is much less today than it was
then.

It was the arrival of Xenon lamp Super 8
projectors (the Elmo was the most common) that
changed the exhibition ofSuper 8. Instead ofthe
small, dark image, now festivals could run a mix of
the mediums and one could confuse the original
Kodachrome imageswith a 16mm print. Corinne:

While we were in Europe, we were staggered with
the quality of the Super 8 prints, especially those
from France: you couldn't believe it was Super 8.
Perhaps the people doing prints here haven't in-
vested the money to get the best quality, which has
affected the use of Super 8.

VIDEO

The Cantrills have an aversion to film on video.
Corinne:

Above all to VHS, which is a very poor format. My
other hatred is video shown on at projector. When
presented on a monitor, it becomes television. Ide-
ally, there should be some other way to present

video that distinguishes it.
Arthur elaborates:

It is due to a confusing of the two media. It is
inevitable that there is some ov[...]even creative work in film and video, but
it is the expediency of showing on video programmes
that ha[...]we are quietly
fighting against. We don't expect to make much
impression on this problem.

There is interesting work being done to exploit
the essentially low-resolution image of video com-
pared to, say, 35mm film. There will eventually be a
high[...]at will
rival film but, until then, we would like to have a

The magazine has covered more installation
video work in the past, butin recentyears we haven't
given it as mu[...]hat film is a
threatened medium andwe are trying to do as much
on film as we can while it is still with us.

I was interested in the things that people like
Warren Burt were doing on the big screen in the
[Melbourne] City Square. They did some very inter[...]have
participated with for performance events.

(The Melbourne City Square screen was a 6
metre by 15.[...]en
filament light bulbs controlled by a computer to
give 16 brightness levels of a warm sepia brown.
The first ofthe big screen displays in Australia, its[...]lized, and
as a vehicle for commercials it failed to make
money.)

The Cantrills first visit to the US. was on a
travel grant to study Film Education. A lot of the
time, Corinne says,

Weconcentratedon visitingvid[...]. We
met up withjud Yalkut, who was talking about the
Film/Video interface,_]im Wiseman, Dan Sandin,
and Ron Hays, who was a major figure in experi-
mental video at that time. We were trying to come to
grips with video, and we went to a lot of video
theatres, rooms set up with multiple monitors that
either showed the same image or they played with
two or three different images.

Among the work of Australian videomakers
discussed in a num[...]ast from Spaceship Earth, as an
example of one of the early sophisticated uses of
colour video-keying t[...]n Hays
talked (in 1973) about video synthesizers, the
Paik-Abe, and how he hoped a mass distribution
videocassette system would accept dubbing from
the cheaper 1/2" video formats so that it could be
used by video artists. He also mentioned the
(failed) RCA videocassette system that used a
laser scanned film strip and talked about the
potential for popular music videos:

Cartrivision[...]olourmusic'...
Every 5- and lO{ent store is going to offer you a
music—image cartridge when everyone[...]lges. Give it ten years and it'll be as common as
the television set is now.

The cost of video versus film issue was a
discussion[...]0-
minute B&W Akai tape ($9).

SIGNIFICANT BOOKS

The magazine Arthur asserts had never been
terriblybo[...]things existence, even if
people will not be able to go and see it, seems
important. But with all the good books turning up.
such as Lipton’s Indepen[...]dams
Sitney's Visionary Film, we felt that we had to men-
tion them and have gone on doing so.

PAUL W[...]n it up in any
commercial or independent way that I know of He
has a computerized device that moves masks in a
certain way and can repeat the exact movement for
various exposures of the film in the camera. This
allows him to accurately matte-in parts of the image
that were blacked out on previous exposures.

GAUGING THE REVOLUTION

The so—called Super 8 revolution never quite
happen[...]n people
working in Standard 8mm and they took up the
new format as did a new generation. Even then it
seemed that blow-up prints to 16mm were the
onlyway to ensure widespread distribution. There
seemed to be a split into a 16mm group and a

Super 8 gr[...]ng that Arthur feels is
changing:

These days, as the last few issues of the magazine
show, there is equally 15mm and Super 8. More
people are working between the gauges, Super 8, 16
and 35mm, depending on the money that is avail-
able to them.

Arthur explained that,

Although we work mainly in 16mm, we have made
a number ofSuper 8 films. The idea ofworkingwith
the largergauges is ofcourse attractive to a lot ofus,
ifwe had the money. We made a 35mm film Flam-iaii
and have ha[...]eduction print. We have
seen it projected in 35mm at the State Film Centre
and it is a very different film to the reduction print.

Our friend Pat O‘Niell in Los[...]de Wain o.'3’P0ztIm; a 35mm film that exploits the
higher definition and control that he can get on his
optical printer. And, of course, Stan Brakhage has
recently made a hand-painted film in the giant
[MAX format, but he is showing a reduction print as
ldon‘t think he can get an Imax theatre to run it for
him. It is a dream that eventually lmax theatres
might run interesting stuffrather than the intermi-
nable travelogue stuff.

LOWERING COSTS[...]ctronic soundtracks, all, asArthur
says, designed to lower thethe
Russian OMO flatspiral developing tanks. Arthur:

In the years we spent in America [1973-75], we
noticed t[...]ings were more advanced
there; whereas we had had the plastic OMO tanks,
they had the stainless-steel_]OBO tanks and access
to low-cost printers. The Americans seemed much
more comfortable and [luent with the technology,
building optical and contact printers[...]plified com-
puter device so that he could leave the printer
ticking over while he was out. There were[...]ve always been disciples of technology
going back to Harry Hooton and his anarcho-tech-
nology thing. The point is, because technology is
expensive, it tends to be used for commercial ends
rather than the more interesting creative ones.

We were always saying back in the 19605 and
'70s that now everyone can be a filmma[...]essible as pencil and paper.’ lfvideo is making
the medium accessible to everyone, how come we
haven't seen the works of video art?

CHANGING THE IMAGE

Arthur points out as examples paint[...]

We don’t often get the chance to work in this way,
but it is nice when it happens.[...]perimentation and ancient image techniques, like
the work of one of my students in Oklahoma, Rob
Danielson, who was experimenting with pinhole
movie photography. The images are very different
from what you get through systems of ground—glass
lenses, almostas if you were seeing the image through
the eye of another creature like an insect; it was so
different to human vision.

Rob also was working with 7381 pri[...]rying it out and
reminded us that we don‘t have to just stick with
what Kodak has provided us to put in the camera.
We used a lot of that to make the negative images in
our central Australian films.[...]ed onto
reversal stock, because it doesn’t have the orange
dye—coupling cast that Eastmancolor neg[...]lots of
light. When you print it onto itself you get very
peculiar blueish-purple, mainly high-contrast im-
ages.

HOMAGE TO THE BOLEX

The Bolex is still the most robust and accessible
16mm camera for independent work, while not
denying the importance ofa range of other cam-
eras such as the Bell 8c Howell, Cine Kodak and
the Beaulieus. The cover ofissue 10 has stills from
Michael Lee’s National Geographic, a film that I
suggested was a homage to the Bolex as it ex-
ploited the ability of the Bolex H-16 to backwind
aframe with reasonable accuracy and the manual
fade attachment that allowed a set fade length by
manually closing the shutter. Corinne:

Michael Lee's National Geograpliiris one of the great
films of the Australian scene. But the technical
complexity is not understood by most of[...]filmmakers use their understanding ofthe medium
to devise techniques for their own needs.

Arthur ad[...]matte shape. That is real
lateral thinking.

Like the work of Paul Winkler, these things are
designed to bypass all the lab technology, which is
designedjust to do one thing well. It laterally uses
stuff that you would find around the house to
produce incredible images.

COMPUTER GRAPHICS

The work of one of the ‘fathers’ of computer
graphics, john Whitney[...]k), was discussed in 1974._]ohn
Whitney also used the available military surplus
equipment to build (from bomtrsighting, ana-
logue-computerequ[...]being churned out in this area
looks so similar. The Experimenta programme on

computer graphics had a[...]om Swin-
burne and, because they are working with the same
software, a lot of their images look the same. They
all had the same diamond-shape image for the
fioor, for example.

Arthur adds that,

It seems[...]reti-
cally, but it is still being constrained by the technol-
ogy. There are times when I get excited at being

transported into these other world environments.

SOUND

The use ofa non—synchronous soundtrack played
from cassette or reel to reel has continued from
the first days ofsound recording. In independent
filmmaking, it continues because of the high cost
ofa sound print, but also, Arthur feels[...]racks are a real disappoint-
ment. It seemed that the quality ofoptical sound on
reversal to reversal actually seemed to go backwards
as if the labs couldn’t hold quality for some techni-

ARTHUR CANTRILL: "I [WANT] TO TOUCH THE HOLOGRAPHIC PLATE BECAUSE IT IS STILL BEYOND OUR[...]ter tracks. When we need stereo
sound, we go back to reel to reel.

Australia never seemed to get onto magnetic
stripe sound like a lot of countrie[...]sia, for example, use it a lot, but we
couldn’t get the labs here to import the striped
print stock. Super 8 stripe at 24 frames is really quite
good and there is the option to have a stereo track
if needed, which is an improv[...]available, Corinne mentioned:

We recently gotVFL to kindly agree to go from the
magnetic to a direct electronic optical track on the
reversal print, which we had done in the past but
now required them to run cables from one side of
the building to the other. The quality was much
better, but they finally said they weren’t going to
offer the service any more.

THREE-COLOUR PROCESS

This is a technique from film history that the
Cantrills have used to make some of their most
beautiful colour films.[...]were
filmmakers in Vancouver and Paris who came to
the technique at the same time, but in Arthur and
Corinne’s case it came from avisit to the Eastman
House museum in Rochester, where one of the
displays had enough detail to get them started on
“Cantrillcolour”, making thei[...]lso partly because of Kodak's cutting out some of
the film stocks we had been using— a lot of revers[...]a lot of Pan F negative stock which isnlt
really the most suitable but, with some help from
VF L, we came up quickly with the right exposures
through Kodak's standard Wratten Filters, and then
it took a bit more time to get the right printer lights.
The result was beautiful colours, better than
Eastmancolor neg we thought, and similar to some
of the earlier Technicolor films. The process is the
same although we didn't have the camera that
would expose the three negs simultaneously, so we
would do them one after the other. This gave us the
time shifts that give the multicoloured shadows and
reflections. It was a p[...]ere so many avenues opened that we have
continued to investigate.

Corinne calls them Time and Colour separa-
tions:

And because there are no colour dyes to fade, they
will last. We will only have to worry about some
shrinkage of the film stock affecting registration.

To echo earlier praise of the Bolex, Arthur
mentions being surprised that,

The Bolex we bought in 1960 was still accurate
enough to be almost spot on for registration on the

threecolour separation films we made fifteen years
later.

REFILMING

Refilming the front- or rear-projected image be-
came almost an Australian film ‘movement’ that
came from the lack of optical printers and devel-
oped into a s[...]this and came up
with images that you couldn‘t get with an optical
printer, such as the camera moving around the
projected image, a technique akin to what can
happen with digital video image m[...]

That magic bafflement is like a re—run of the early
cinema experience and gives a feeling and a sense
ofwhat the first cinema audiences must have felt. At
the first Lumiere screening, people went up to
touch the screen to try and getsome idea ofthis new
illusion. I have the same feeling with wanting to
touch the holographic plate because it is still be-
yond our understanding.

For the magazine, we interviewed in 1979
Margaret Benyon,[...]and struggling with terrible
technical problems. I find most of the holographic
work remains a terribly primitive experience.

STEREO FILM
Arthur believes,

The whole area ofstereoscopic cinematography is a
real problemjust holding together the technology
seems to be almost insuperable.

Of the people mentioned in the magazine,

Kenjacobs seems to have been the most successful,
though he wasn‘t really using film, but recreating

the stereo effect on a big screen using silhouettes lit
in different colours. The audience had coloured
glasses and he was actually generating artificial 3D
by the careful placement of the shadows.

Standish Lawderwas thinking of averyabstract
stereo which was denying the normal human per-
ception of depth and playing around with getting
the space to merge. Lenny Lipton had two Nizo
Super 8 cameras[...]as a more technical exercise.

STAYING ALIVE

On the subject of the archival qualities of the
mediums we have chosen, the Can trills have strong
views and disturbing experience. Corinne begins
by mentioning that,

All the videos that were made in the early 1970s
can‘tbe played now. It is a problem with film aswell.
Apparently the firstsafetyfilms are starting to break-
down now; there is colour fading.

Arthur adds their own experiences:

We have spoken to people who can no longer play
the ta.pes they made because ofthe trouble with the
binder [which holds the oxide to the base]. We
suddenly found thatsome oftheAmpex audi[...]en years ago couldn’t be played. When
you start to play them, after aboutfifteen seconds all
this gunk accumulates on the head and sets up this
dramatic mechanical squeal and vibration.

Ampex says that the solution is heat and to
cook the tapes in an oven. Chris Knowles has had to
do this with some ofhis tapes, using a fan heater in
a small space and then immediately transferring
them. I’ve salvaged some of our tapes by running
them b[...]e
and scrapingoffthe binderwhich has come through
the oxide.

George Kuchar is one interesting case but[...]ette player draped
around his neck and he presses the button and
has this schlock Hollywood mood music[...]ncession is that he uses a line input
rather than the mike. If there is a bit that he later
decides is dull, he goes back and inserts over the
top ofit— usually a shot ofhis face — and drops in
a comment. He wanted to demolish the High Art
of film that was typified by the Anthology Film
Archive.

Corinne asked him ifhe wasn‘tworried about
the impermanence and short life of these vide-
otapes, of the video dying so quickly. His answer
was, “l’mworried about MYSELF dying, notabout
the films or video.” For him, the important thing
was for him to keep alive and working, and let
someone else worry about when the tapes fade.

SPECIFIC MAGAZINE ISSUES MENTIONED

Expanded Cinema: Issue No. 1, March 1971.
Cinemapoetry at The Maze: No.3, May l97l.
Video in A Public Space —[...]os 35, 36.

George Kuchar Interview: Nos 55, 56.

The last single Issue of Canrills Filmnoles, was 16 in De-
cember 1973 after a double issue, 14/15. Since then the
issues have been double numbers appearing twice a[...]declares war”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4

SPAA: On the contrary, SPAA is motivated by the
hope and expectation that DILGEAwill, in accor-
d[...]e
Manual, decide each case on its merits based on
the objective ‘net employment benefit’ criterion.

8. EQUITY: Actors Equity points to two films with
overseas artists, fI71eDelinquents and Wendy Cracked
at Walnut, and states that SPAA has failed to com-
ment why they were unsuccessful.

SPAA: Neither film was made by any SPAA mem-
ber and who knows why they were not successful?
There are probably a nu[...]rs. In any
event, both were successful in raising the requi-
site budget in order to be shot at all. Equity’s
statement that “the reasons for the commercial
success of a production are complex” also applies
in analysing why films are not successful, com-
mercially or othe[...]l.

9. EQUITY: “What government policy attempts to
achieve is that ‘non-Australian’ or so-cafle[...]ligible for govem-
rnent assistance.”

SPAA: As the FFC‘s own objectives and funding
requirements clearly indicate, the government’s
policy is aimed at ensuring that films funded by

the government contain significant Australian
conten[...]resent wise investments on a com-
mercial basis.

I0. EQUITY states that it “agreed to” 27 U.S. per-
formers being imported for the series Mission:
Impossible, and an entire cast in Aar¢m’s Way.

SPAA: The Mission: Impossible approval was not
made under the 1988 SPAA—Equity Agreement as
the producers were not members of SPAA. Fur-
thermore, Equity omits to mention that in return
for its generosity SAG rates were demanded and
paid.

In the case of Aaronk Way, an overseas pilot
production shot in Australia, the producers were
not SPAA members and this production took
place before the 1988 Agreement commenced in
any event.

I I. EQUITY: “What if Equity applies the rules un-
fairly? Can the producer appeal? Yes, the policy
includes an independent arbitrafion mechanism
which the producers may call upon if they con-
sider themselves unfairly treated.”

SPAA: This is the most blatant example ofEquity’s
attempt to mislead readers of its article. Only in
the case of non-government assisted films, mini-seri[...]private
arbitration ifno agreementis reached. In the case
of all govervtmenlasslsted projects, under the Agree-
ment, the producer can ask Equity for one further
overseas artist to play a supporting role, but Eq-
uity‘s decision[...]request is “final
and cannot be challenged by the producer”.

This is a major omission of fact by[...]all, projects cur-
rently occurring in Australia at the moment are
government-assisted.

I 2. EQUITY: “What would happen if a.n open-door-
entry policywere introduced? while difficult to
predict, we suspect there would be [producers]
who would elect to import foreign performers for
the majority, if not all, leading roles.”

SPAA: SPAA’s policy does notamount to an “open-
door-entry policy". It is ludicrous to suggest that
producers will import foreign actorsjust for the
sake ofit— an exercise which involves considerable
money, time and effort, the expenditure ofwhich
any producer would prefer to avoid.

SPAA will not support the indiscriminate use
of foreign actors. SPAA will support a producer’s
decision to cast overseas actors where there are
compelling a[...]nt, DASSET certification, which is re-
quired in the case of government—assisted proj-
ects, where A[...]an content" in any
such projects.

Editor's note: The above articles have been subbed
according to Cinema Papers’ house style, but other-
w[...]

DJANGO,

RINGO,

SAMSON AND

THE MAN WITH NO NAMES

Barrie Pattison

t was a surprise to find the death, at 64, of

Italian director Sergio Corbucci recorded[...]Even here, however, he was shadowed by
references to Sergio Leone, whose first‘ film Cor-
bucci ha[...]and spa-
ghetti-cowboy productions were taken as the ma-
jor works of those cycles when the distinction
rightly belonged to Corbucci.

Either side of the days when you might find a
Corbuccirunning atyou[...]s—stud-
ent- become-film critic, he trained in the Italian
films of the end of the neo—realist period in thethe
pattern of wide circulation in the international
programmer market.

Parallel with his successes with some of the
best of the muscle—man epics — IlFiglio dz'Spa71acus
(Son ofSpartaeus/The Slave, 1962) and RomoloeRemo
(Duel oflhe Titans, 1961) — Corbucci worked in the
uncommented-on Italian burlesque cycle: Dalce
Vila (I 961), starringTo'to; IDueMaresccialli (1961),
with Toto and De Sica d[...]- CINEMA PAPERS 82

from Traversée de Paris; and I Figli del Leopardo

(1965) with Ciccio Ingrassia playing both the

Lancaster and Cardinale roles from the Visconti

original, courtesy ofthe split—screen camera which

was to be a feature of the Corbucci films. His The‘
Shortest Day (1962) was the only example of the

export-resistant genre to achieve international

distribution.

It was with the Westerns that Corbucci really
hit his stride, actually beating Leone into the
cycle with a couple ofearly efforts. However, itwas
when his old copyist skills were called on in 1966
to produce a bogus Dollars film that he launched
Franco Nero in the much—sequelled, much-
banned Django, easily exc[...]model.

Even better followedjohnny On) (1966) and
the two films with Nero, who had been biding
time on the Camelotset till he could getback to his
Italian Westerns, Il1VIercenan'0 (A Professio[...]Matar, Companeros (Compan-
eros, 1969) , proving the two mostaccomplished of
their kind, followed by I[...]974) ,which hoes into Red Sunwith Tomas Milian
in the Mifune role.

Corbucci'sglorydays acceleratedin the 19705.
The excellent ErPiu (1971) began his long—run-

ning collaboration with Adriano Celantano, the
rocker-turned-actor who can be glimpsed in La
Dolce Vita doing his act and was to become the
greatest Italian popular star of the next decade,
though his refusal to travel or learn English meant
he is unknown outside Europe. Their films to-
gether included the 1974 hit Blufj’, with Anthony
Quinn, and Di Che Segno Sei (1975), with Alberto
Sordi.

Corbucci became the master of the outra-
geous: hippy cowboyjohnny I-Ialliday forcing the
town bourgeois to crawl naked through the cart-
track mud in Gli Specialisli (Drop Them orI’llShool) ,
the distantintroduction of Burt Reynolds as Navajo
jo[...]ow_]ack Palance’s
Wooden Hand john got down off the cross he

REEVES IN ROMOLO E REMO.

nailed him to, Celantano looking round for a
larger piece of marine life to fish-whip Mauricio
Arena or swarthy Mark Damon facing the clean-
cut, white—wearing teenage villain whose family
he has bounty—killed to be told, “Smile at me
Ringo for I am deathl”

Then there was the time 11 C-rande Sileneio did

its week in the Paris action houses before its star,
_]ean Louis Trintignant, carried off the Cannes
Grand Prix. A sharp exhibitor brought it back
with its alternative grim ending in “the original
English language version ” and it play[...]tually got a sub—titled
release in II Bestione (The Ez’g}it—I/Vheeled Beasl).
However, the critics had been dismissive of Cor-
bucci’s mad[...], playing his character as a
mute.) Itwas only as the Italian Western dwindled
that a few commentatorsa[...]rbucci’s ferocious style should have earned
him the status of a Sam Fuller or ajohn Milius.
Instead, another pattern set in: aswith the films of
jack Smight orjohn Avildsen, lack ofrecognition
encouraged the abandonment of their directors’
most distinctive traits.

Corbucci‘s career continued to the present.
In 1990 he completed the television production
Women in Arms. He worked with all the greats of
the Italian Comedy: Mastroianni in Giallo Na/Jo[i-
tano (1978) and Atti Attrocissimi dz‘ Amore e[...]lli
and Paollo Villaggio. There was even a return to
international distribution as Terence Hill and
Bud Spencer cast their one big shadowin W71o1"i7zdr
(1 Fnemi Finds a Treasure and the American-made
Odds and Evens (both 1981) aimed at the kiddie
market.

Many of these films survive in the Italian-
language video outlets and it is not unlikely that
among the unfamiliar titles lurk some with the
familiar zest. For those of us who tracked down
Sergio Corbucci‘s work in the ethnic cinemas and
double~feature flea pits round the globe, he holds
a larger place in our affections[...]ies. He
will be missed.

It is not uncommon
to think of only five
filmmakers when we
speak of the nouvelle
vague Godard, Tru-
ffaut, Chabrol, Ro-[...]quesDemy
‘V3’ ll “ can be mentioned in
‘J the same breath as the

{E i above notaries of the

‘. A

French cinema, it is
still inconceivable to many to view Demy as a new
wave figure. This is unfortuna[...]es Varda included, one
can argue he was a part of the ‘other’ new wave
(on the left bank of the Seine, so to speak), a
movement just as lively and just as significant as
the official nouvelle vague; and, with Demy in its

g[...]eed, this oversight is doubly unforgiv-
able, and the following issue of Cinema Papers
will publish a necessarily detailed, critical obitu-
ary to honour a man who honoured himself with
the words: “I prefer blue to black, births to
funerals, red wine to Vichy water, the sun to the
rain.” RC

ABOVE: DIRECTOR JACQUES DEMY.[...]

PO Box 159 PORT MELBOURNE
VICTORIA 3207

You can buy any of the following titles for only
$34.95 (except for LA D[...]sette.

NO. or COPIES TOTAL 5

AND THE SHIP SAILS ON
BLOOD SIMPLE
FAMILY VIEWING
LA DOLCE VITA ($39.95)
MARLENE

NO TIME FOR TEARS
SALVATION
THE FOURTH MAN

WHAT HAPPENED To KEROUAC? ..... .. $ ...... ..
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POSTAGE & H[...]Now VOU CAN BUILD YOUR OWN LIBRARY OF SOME OF
THE BEST TITLES IN CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA.

S It El(3 I AK 1. C)iF I713 I{

TO c lebrate the launch of Contemporary Video Visions — a new
ma[...]ffering Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolce
Vita for the first time on videotape in Australia. Set in the 19605, the film
is a Styli tale of decadence, the pursuit Of fame and the good life.

La ,olce Vita is considered by many Overseas and local critics to be one
of thervlzist films of the last 30 years.

“RE INS ESSENTIAL VIEWING ENERGETIC, STIMULATING,

A FEAST FOR THE EYES AND THE MIND.” — THE TIMES

CONTEMPORARY VIDEO VISIONS IS OFFERING NIN[...]GE AND HANDLING PER CASSETTE.
(LA DOLCE VITA, DUE TO ITS LENGTH, COSTS $39.95)

FOR CAPITAL CITY ORDERS OF 4 OR MORE CASSETTES. THE POSTAGE AND HANDLING CHARGE IS $10.00

Nmmw
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VISUALLY sPLENIIIFEIIous FILMS.”
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FOR MATURE

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I ND OVER
BIOGRAPHY

noonlmn umioa IMII[...]Card
(please print) , _ . . 4 , _. .. , .
Return to: CONTEMPORARY VIDEO VISIONS, PO Box 159, P[...]

Z

8 Z >. E In

_| E I: < I‘ E

E 3 E‘ § § 3 E 5 § 2 .5: §

8 F 5 = 3 5- E‘. E F E Z 3

-II — 7 8 7
CONTES DE PRINTEMPS Eric Rohmer — 10[...]— 1 — — 1 6
PREDATOR 2 Stephen Hopkins 5 5 I — — 1 7 — — — — 4 -
PRESUMED INNOCENT Alan j. Pakula 9 6 7 6 7 7 7 2 3 6 5 7
PUMP UP THE VOLUME A. Moyle — — — 3 5 4 3 7 — 6 7 —[...]ienne Chatiliez 9 — — 3 8 — 2 — 3 1 9 —
I‘
TOTAL RECALL Paul Verhoeven 8 6 — 4 7 7 6 1[...]Nicholson - — 3 — 2 — 1 - — 2 6 —
WHAT THE MOON SAW Pino Amenta — '— — 4 — 6 3 — — — 3 —
WILD AT HEART David Lynch - — 8 3 6 4 1 1 1 4 9[...]

F I

THIS ISSUE:

ALMOST AN ANGEL; GOLDEN BRAID; GREE[...]NIGHT; METROPOLITAN; WEEKEND WITH KATE; AND,
WHAT THE MOON SAW.

ABOVE: TERRY DEAN [PAUL HOGAN),
THE FORMER CRIM WHO BECOMES
GOOD BY BECOMING AN ANGEL[...]shoulder. That is,
they feel they have something to prove to the
world and, time permitting, to themselves.
Hogan had an awful lot to prove with Almost
an Angel: that he could make a successful film
without the word “Crocodile” in the title; that he
escape his Mick Dundee typecasting[...]s where those chips come from. Sometimes they
are the result of a person’s own cynicism, para-

noia and anxiety. More often, though, they are
the result of someone else’s cynicism, paranoia
and anxiety. (Film critics, in particular, have
turned the art of Trans-Shoulder Chip Transfer-
ence into a science.)

In the case of Paul Hogan and his third
feature film, Almost anAngel, he had an enormous
chip on either shoulder. The one on the leftwas
the size of Uluru and was the result of his huge
popularity through his two “[...]Dundee
films, which were historic successes for the Aus-
tralian film industry.

The one on the right was given to him by the
public and the media, who hailed him as a tower-
ing icon of laconic, good ol’ cut-‘em-down-to-size
Australianness in the American market. That
chip was the size of the credibility chasm cur-
rently facing the Australian film industry.

But regardless of wher[...]nd is probably what killed it. Working from
under the weight of these chips didn’t help.

This is a pity because the film isn't bad. It is
certainly many timesfunnier and morewatchable
than either of the Dundeefilms which, while being
masterful exercis[...], Terry believes he
has been given another chance at life. Back on
earth as a probationary angel he wi[...]es good things,
helps handicapped people, spreads the odd Bible
fable around and looks heavenward a lot.

Hogan did have a lot to prove with Almost an
Angel and, at least zesthetjcally, he has made a
good crack at all these things, particularly the
stuff about liking God.

God is big at the moment and popular cul-
ture over the past few years has been brimming
with the Guy. Filmwise, Ghost, the biggest film of
1990, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and
Raiders of theLostArk, two of the biggestfilms of the
century, had screamingly spiritual themes in them[...]mple
Minds, Madonna, Jon Bon jovi and even she of
the bursting bustand catty one-liner, Bette Midler,
have openly declared their religious bent. And
the Bible continues to sell well.

So Hogan (and Cornell, of cour[...]

For instance, the way Terry’s belief that he is
an angel is engin[...]his encounter
with Heston and a clip from Highway to Heaven, he
is shot by a rival crim at point-blank range but is
not hit Terryand the crim reactaccordingly and,
it is only after the audience has entertained the
possibility that Terry might just be an agent of
Heston, that it is revealed the gun had blanks.
Terry’s subsequent attempts to fly are a nice
touch, as is the odd reaction from the priestwhen
Terry tells him that he is bullet-proo[...]a charming scene where Terry
unsuccessfully tries to sermonize to two kids about
the wisdom of King Solomon. And having Heston
play Go[...]aking his spiritual pretensions too seri-
ously.

The character of Terry also effectively under-
cuts D[...]idence and an endearing naivety that under-
mined the arrogance and bluster of me New York
he visited. The films were shot in Panavision
because the screen had to be big enough to
accommodate the character. Anything smaller
would have worked aga[...]such loftiness with Terry Dean in
Almost an Angel The former-crim-goes-good-by
becoming-an-angel device[...]from within. This is most unlike
Dundee, who had to have situations clumsily
foisted upon him to get him and the movie
moving. Cmcodz'leDundeewas virtually plotle[...]ground also gives
him a pragmatism and earthiness to look life in
the face. Hence the excellent scene when he first
meets Steve (Elias[...]s shoulder (if
you've justjumped into this review at this point,
see beginning of story). He inhabits[...]us behaviour
tolerated because he is crippled. “I see a man in a
wheelchair acting like ajerk in a[...]a chair,
thus winning his friendship by refusing to patron-
ize him.

The other important thing toto it (a crack
about his accent). That it is never explained what
an Australian is doing living in America is to be
loudly applauded, just as Bryan Brown’s Aust[...]ognition
thatAustralians are cosmospolitan enough to live
in the world without having to explain themselves
is a most heartening backhander to the dreaded
and deeply-set cultural cringe.

Hogan’s performance (of course) and the
nature of his humour (of even more course) are
es[...]m. His humour is laconic
and he prides himself on the ‘slow burn’ school of
comedy, something which[...]won-
derful London television comedy specials in the
mid-1970s.

The only problem with this appraisal of Hogan
and Almost anAngelis that it is wrong. The film has
had avery cool critical reception in the U.S. and
here, and the box—offrce has been poor. Why? I
have a theory about that.

It’sprettyobvious: p[...]much. Hogan had created an image that was
too big to shake off successfully withjust one film.
It might take the next one to click, or the next
again (and he and Cornell apparently have the
backing). But at least Hogan had the sense not to
make a third Dundee frlm. Here’s hoping he has
the good sense to continue not making one. (A
couple of the local critics flippantly suggested in
their reviews that a third Dunrleewould have been
preferable to Almost anAngeL About the only thing
the world needs less than nuclear war is another
Dundee.)

But why was the critical response, especially
in Australia, so cold? I have some theories about
that, too.

If Hogan has[...]ticular
line of defence, he inevitably will: it's the old,
trusty ‘tall poppy’ syndrome, which, painful as it
is to suggest, seems very much in evidence here.
I-Ioges had got too big for his boots, was a bit too
successful, a bit too cocky, and itwas time to bring
him down a notch or two. Indeed, the film's
slogan, “Who does he think he is?“, could very
well represent the collective thoughts ofthe criti-
cal community to[...]him live
children. He then married his co—star, the young,
blonde, extremely attractive Linda Kozlows[...]an angry
Hogan on 60 Minutes saying how he wanted to
“cave in heads".

Hogan has a right to a private life, but the
press was so intense that it was difficult to ignore
the multi-projected image of a man effectively
‘tra[...]lot ofmileage out ofit during her Australian tour
at the time.

So, in a sense, the reviewers could have been
indirectly ‘punishing’ Hogan for this. (Whether
this has anything to do with the cool public
reaction to Almost an Angel remains an even big-
ger mystery.[...]stwan ted
more Mick.)

A second theory explaining the cool local
critical reaction to the film embraces the possibil-
ity that the reviewers didn‘t like it much. But
that’s their own look out.

It was perhaps inevitable that Hogan had to
flop at some time post-Dundee II, and I'm begin-
ning to suspect he knew this full well. Realizing
that, he may have written this one off.

Ofall the things Hogan was meant to achieve
with Almost an Angel, perhaps the most valuable
will be to see how well he can survive failure. He
may lose[...]ume designer: April Ferry.
Editor: David Sll\'€1i. Composer: Mauricejarre. Sound:

Tom Brandau. Cas[...]lienated characters are
all searching desperately to be reunited with
meaning through other people. Cox’s themes are
deeply embedded in his stories, and the ideas
generated by these themes are fleshed out as he
develops his characters. so that sometimes at a
first viewing his films seem more obscure than
they actually are.

In Cartus, the central metaphor is blindness,
expressing the need to see things afresh by expos-
ing ourselves to truth, pain and other people. My
Fir.r'l Wzfe is[...]s, a groping through bewilderment and disbe-
lief to the edge of understanding. Man ofFlowers

CINE[...]

In Golden Braid, Cox has chosen to explore
the way a fear of death can often mask a fear of
life[...]descriptions crowd his house, and they glow
with the golden patina that attaches to loved and
cherished objects. In the film’s opening shots, the
clocks tick and chime with all the orderly preci-
sion of the music of the spheres, and we can
understand Bernard‘s fascination with them — to
a point.

There is an edgy uptightness to Bernard, an
obsessiveness in the way he resets and checks his
clocks that makes us feel that he may have an odd
sexuality. When the doorbell rings and a pretty
young woman appears suddenly on his doorstep,
dressed in the unlikely costume of the Sally Ann,
we wouldn’t be surprised if she were[...]Man ofFlowers (a
film that bears some comparison to Golden Braid) ,
Bernard is a sexually active man.[...]s ongd
ing. We learn something about his attitude to her
from conversations Bernard has with his psych[...]e has a new lover in his life now; he's
attracted to her because she is asocial worker; and
he has no objection to her being married. On the
contrary, “How could you trust a woman who
doesn't belong to anybody?”, he asks. We also
learn that Bernard[...]is trysts with Terese, consum-
mated sometimes on the staircase of his house
during the evenings that she stays with him,
Bernard pours m[...]sion into beautiful
objects he has collected from the past. His house
is filledwith treasures, paintings, furniture. Clocks
move him the most. “A clock takes possession of
you, like a[...]s he weeps with grief, haunted by death and
moved to pity by the thought of those now dead
who once lived. He loves to see the little watch he
repaired for Terese, sitting between her breasts.
It reminds him of the dead woman it once be-
longed to. “When a watch is fixed,” he explains to
her, “you make new links between the living and
the dead."

One day, fate decrees that Bernard shall be
given a chance to indulge to the full his desire to
build a bridge to the dead. He takes possession of
an old cabinet, said to be Venetian, and, while
restoring it, discovers a panel which conceals a
secret drawer. Inside the drawer, which is lined
with blue velvet, lies a m[...]d
golden braid of hair.

Bernard is feverish with the thrill of his dis-
covery. He tells no one about the treasure, hug-
ging his secret to himself. Who was she? How
miraculous that the hair is preserved intact, yet
the woman no longer exists. How sad. At first, he
simplystrokes the braid, inhaling the traces of the
dead woman’s perfume, or he takes it out obses-
sively to look at it. Soon, he cannot bear not to

52 - CINEMA PAPERS 82

carry the braid with him in his jacket pocket. He
talks to it, sleeps with it, makes love to it, takes it
out to dinner with him to a restaurant. Finally he
takes it to a concert, laying it out surreptitiously
on the empty seatbeside him thatwas reserved for
Terese. To all intents and purposes, Bernard has
exchanged a living woman for a dead one.

In the story by Maupassant, Bernard goes
mad. In Cox’s story, Bernard suffers a crisis, and
recovers. At first it seems inconsistent with such
pathologica[...]Bernard displays, that
he should be cured in much the same way as
someone suffering from pneumonia, who[...]risis (fever, high temperature) and
recovers. But the metaphor of madness, as used
by a novelist or filmmaker, is not necessarily the
same as clinical madness. (Not that we should
ever be seduced by the idea that there is common
agreement or understand[...]ss, as Cox acknowledges when he has
Bernard reply to a question by his psychiatrist,
“How do you know the wise from the mad?”). Cox
makes this distinction between meta[...]madness clear in his style of filmmaking
which is at heart poetic and dreamlike, and con-
cerned with how the mind perceives reality. More
simply, Bernard’s obsession with the golden braid
reflects his state of mind.

What Be[...]ich Terese makes clear by her
protective response to him, “Everything he does
comes from the heart”), and his mourning, still,
for awoman in[...]reality is symptomatic of malaise, brought on by
the state of the world.

Many of our own dissatisfactions with the
world are expressed through Bernard. His brother,[...]r, is always after
him for money, which he gives. At the bank, he is
no longer treated as avalued customer, butas one
more client trying to default on an overdraft.
“There’s no trust left in the worldl", Bernard
bellows in anger and frustration at the bank
manager (George Fairfax).

Bernard defends himself from the soulless-
ness and ugliness of the world he lives in, evoked
humorously and compassionately by the electric
clock in the form of an antelope brought to him
for repair by an old lady (Sheila Florance) ,[...]uities. What these beautiful objects rep-
resent, the clocks especially, is nostalgia. And
nostalgia is always part of a search for home.

Bernard no longer feels at home in the mod-
ern world. He feels suspended in time, caught in
a no-man’s land, which is why he flees to the past.
Time is out ofjoint, and nothing expresses this so
well to Bernard as the replacing of the mechani-
cal clock by the quartz battery. When the bank
manager, in an attempt to mollify Bernard’s rage,
shows him the watch he has been given to mark
his retirement, Bernard shows some insight i[...]e with time! ”, he exclaims angrily. “We have
to hear it tick so we’re aware of the passing of
time. That’s why I repair them."

The tick of a clock is like a heartbeat. It
connects us to life past, present and future, the
minute before and the minute just past. By trying
to escape the present (in which he feels alien and
out of place), through a mystical union with the
past, Bernard places himself in jeopardy. He is i[...]of life altogether,
and going mad. Bernard comes to his senses, so to
speak, when the braid begins to fray and unravel.

The crisis is precipitated when he realizes that he
is living a fantasy. The golden braid, like every-
thing else, is corrupti[...]a metaphor for isola-
tion, being locked away in the mind from other
people, lost in oneself. When we[...]ic and depressed rather than
classically mad, and the most observable symp-
tom of this neurotic depression is his braid fetish.
Cox has melded the Freudian and Marxian no-
tions of fetishism by fo[...]al perversion, and more on makingus sympa-
thetic to the alienation which is driving him mad.
And he does[...]clearly that he is trapped in a horrible circle. The
fetishism with the braid contains his griefs, but it
also isolates h[...]including Ter-
ese.

Terese represents salvation to Bernard
through love. The fact that Terese and her harm-
less immature husband are members of the Salva-
tion Army is, of course, a deliberate irony. Cox
places no trust in the power of either conven-
tional religions or psychiatry to help Bernard
solve his problems. (The nice touch of Cox‘s
playing the priest, to whom Bernard turns in a last
desperate plea for help, is a dig, perhaps, at any
pretensions the artist may have that his work has
the power to change the world.) Ultimately,
Bernard must confront and sol[...]Terese’s love.

There is another deeper meaning to Golden
Braid which gives the film a satisfying cohesion.
Bernard has a grainily realized, recurring dream
which haunts him. It is set in the open. The
camera lurches towards a cow in a field. It is a[...]a milkmaid. A calfpulls on its
mother’s udders. The maid is now seen to be old.
The calf tugs at her long skirt. There is blood on
her foot. Bernard has the dream after he has made
love with Terese, and its[...]owerless,
and destroyed.

Bernard is afflicted by the fear of women. The
Great Goddess here is seen in Bernard’s dream i[...]and crone.
Bernard associates loving with dying.

To love is to be opened up and wounded.
Bernard seeks to remain intact and enclosed, but
he is driven to the brink of madness by it.

Golden Braid is the story of a neurotic man
who is brought back from isolation and discon-
nection, by his recovery of faith in the love between
him and a generous woman. It is a si[...]ed, profound film, rich in detail, and Cox tells
the story with humour and genuine eroticism,
h[...]

Herein lies the strength and weakness of the
film. Basically the film is a romantic comedy,
although the “curious stories” have obviously in-
spired Weir to include elements of the screwball
comedy that charmed audiences in the second
half of the 19305. This generic hybrid, which
extends from It Happened One Nightin 1934 to the
touching Cr0ssingDelancey and the overrated Pretty
Woman in the past couple ofyears, depends heav-
ily on a continuously sharp, witty script and places
great pressure on the two principal actors to
involve an audience in their basically predictabl[...]ith—
boy-against-her-will storyline. Depardieu, at least
for this reviewer, does not entirely succee[...]generic requirements.

Green Card also continues the curious rela-
tionship between the classical Hollywood cinema
and an Australian dire[...]erspective, in his Australian films,
with regard to the traditional requirements of
this kind of cinema,[...]ve that cares little

for narrative coherence and the dramatic trajec-
tory centred on climax and resol[...]three earlier Holly-
wood productions, reaffirms the ability of this
aesthetic system to assimilate distinctive talents
and backgrounds. T[...]ard; it means that these ‘touches’, involving the
effective use of images, atmosphere and milieu,
are not isolated, as they tend to be in hisAustralian
films, but are an integrated[...]causality and motivation,
climax and resolution.

The story, an old staple involving opposites
who disc[...]es. Frenchman George‘ Faure (De-
pardieu) wants to stay in the United States and
Bronte Parrish (Andie MacDowell[...]reenhouse, including fifteen-foot tree ferns. As
the apartment is only available to a married
couple, her ‘green card’ marriage to George
provides both the money and the necessary marital
status. Bronte, who finds George boorish, plans
never to see him again after the marriage.

A government investigation a few months
later, however, forces Bronte to reluctantly ac-
cept George into her apartment fo[...]Their rela-

l Editor's note: This is not a typo. The end credits and the
production notes spell this French characters name with the un-
French "George". thethe basis of the
film and generates the “curious situations" ema-
nating from such opposites. Bronte is a horticul-
turalist and a member of the “Green Guerillas”, a
volunteer organization committed to transform-
ing the rubble-filled lots and ugly urban face of
NewYor[...]and parks.

Her boyfriend, Phil (Gregg Edelman), the man-
datory third partner, is a vegetarian and fellow
member ofthe “Green Guerillas”, and appears to
be a ‘perfect’ partner. However, there are cues
provided for the audience quite early in the film
that Gregg does not generate sufficient he[...]opens up a romantic space for
George. George, on the other hand, would not
know afuchsia from a fig and has no commitment
to any causes beyond himself, is able to provoke

anger and indignation in Bronte, and he provides

a counterpoint to Bronté’s ordered, caringworld.

Bronte’s social concerns, however, do not
extend to the morality of her action in marrying
George for an apartment, and the film feels little
need to explore the expediency of this action
beyond utilizing it as[...]s in only one main scene) tells
her it is against the law, the issue is subsequently
reduced to 101/e(Bronté—George) versus the threat
to love from intrusive government investigators.

Without this subtext, the film either succeeds
or fails according to the individual pleasure, or
irritation, derived from the ‘screwball’ ramifica-
tions oftheir basic si[...]constructing
a fictional folio of photographs on the roof of
Bronté‘s apartment: skiing in the ‘alps’, holiday-
ing in ‘Hawaii’ or memorizing the colour of his
toothbrush, noting the brand of her cold cream,
etc.). Because there is little surprise or pace to
divert attention away from the two leads, so much
of the film is dependent on the ‘chemistry’ be-
tween Depardieu and MacDowell[...]Weir
apparently emphasized as he wanted Depardieu
to keep his “tongue on its toes", certainly requires
a major reorientation with anyone familiar with
the genre as itdoes not lend itself to the sparkling
repartee associated with Cary Grant (or[...]r practitioners of
this craft. MacDowell fulfils the requisite style and
tone ofa committed “Green G[...]vulnerability, al-
though this is not balanced by the incisive wit and
crackle ofa Rosalind Russell, Ca[...]Long and her Cheers replacement,
Kirstie Alley.

To continue the comparison with Cheers, a
reasonable analogy cons[...]its dependence upon cutting dia-
logue exchanges, the inability of Depardieu and
MacDowell to effectively combine the romance
with an oddball persona is exposed when B[...]riend, Lauren (Bebe Neuwirth), appears.
Neuwirth, the repressed Dr. Lilith Sternin—Crane
in Chem, eff[...]ties and
her distinctive voice and phrasing hints at a truly
‘screwball’ character. Unfortunately, she quickly
disappears and the potential for a major subplot
involving Lauren and George is not realized.
Similarly, the romantic triangle involving Phil,
Bronte and George is allowed to lapse except for
an effective point-of-view shot as George is forced
to walk past Bronte and Phil on the street. Ulti-

CINEMA PAPERS 82 - 53

Yet in the context of the overall drama there
is a reluctance to draw upon the excesses of
melodrama and push the film towards the outer
edges of the genre. Too often Weir, as in the past,
occupies the middle ground. This is apparent in
his regular use of the unhappy ending that is also
happy. For example, as john Book (Harrison
Ford) leaves Rachel (Kelly McGillis) at the end of
Witness, he is replaced by the Amish suitor Daniel
Hochleitner (Alexander Godunov); when Neil
Perry suicides near the end of Dead Poets Society, and
john Keating (Robin Williams) is sacrificed by the
school administration, the film concludes on a
note ofultimate victory; and when George is torn
away from Bronte at the end of Green Card, love

finally triumphs.

Overall, the romanticimprobabilitiesin Green
Card provide a nu[...]s and touch-
ing moments but it does not maintain the neces-
sary wit and sparkle to make it a memorable
contribution to the genre.

GREEN CARD Directed by Peter Weir. Produc[...]n (Bronté’s father). Greencard
Productions and the Australian Film Finance Corpora-
tion.Australian[...]cinema. Heaven
Tonight will not be remembered as the best of
them, but it is nonetheless a credible mo[...]roll hasbeen attempting a come-back.
Produced by the Melbourne-based Boule-
vard Films, the movie tries hard to weave authen-
ticity of character, location and d[...]a
plot with lots of potential. In trying so hard to tell
its story, however, Heaven Tonight labours under
the weight ofa staid orthodoxy that might other-
wise[...]o-writers Frank Howson and Alister Webb
have gone to considerable lengths to develop a
scenario yet to be chronicled in movies exploring
mainstream music. According to its promoters,
the film is the firstofits kind to explore the father-
and-son generation gap and the seemingly in-
compatible strains of rock music th[...]nterjohn Waters asjohnny Dysart, ageing rocker
on the verge of mid-life catharsis, and his budding
rock[...]nvic-
tion by Guy Pearce, formerly of Neighbours. The
character ofjohnny Dysart comes to life in the
film’s opening as black-and-white snippets of the
fictional Australian rock band, the Chosen Ones,
are interwoven into a collage of images from the
19605. This is done well to the tune of the film's
title song, and in the space ofa few minutes one
learns that the band once had fame, got into
drugs and then, surprise surprise, experienced
an irreparable split.
The next frame fast-forwards 18 years with
the now semi-grey-haired Dysart living in subur-
ban[...]ndyoung Pearce. One soon gets an idea
of what’s to come when Dysart snr is asked by his
loving, albeit doubting, wife if he is sure he is
going to get that record deal, and he answers with
blind self-assuredness: “It's that close I can smell
it.” Fearing her husband's inability to make a
comeback, Annie suggests that they buy into a
Japanese restaurant together, a proposal to which
Dysart does not take kindly. And there is a[...]ing on a wider front with his son, who one is
led to believe is an unassuming but talented
musician. The main problem is that Dysartjnr in-
corporates computer rhythms into the format of
his band Video Rodney, and the old man, being

the rock ’n’ roll purist that he is, can't stand it.

By this stage one senses the arrogant, self-
possessedjohnny is unconsciously[...]band crony Baz Schultz (Kim
Gyngell) does little to keep the boat stable. Schultz
materializes like some apparition a third of the
way through the film and breathes a comic pathos
on to the screen. This tragic but likeable card
turns out to be more than just an appropriate foil
for the intensejohnny Dysart. He arrives on the
scene somewhat mysteriously and to the chagrin
of both Dysart and his wife; a reminder of trouble
in the past and perhaps a signal of more to come.

With his pock-marked skin, drug-wasted eye[...]faded. Both Schultz and Dysart share memories
of the same dream, only Schultz has given up
trying to reassemble its fragments. And while
Schultz is bent on selfxlestnlction, the viewer is
left to wonder whether he is indeed the more
tragic of the two characters.

In drawing the aforementioned players into
conflicts, the film raises a number of universal
themes, includ[...]mony, illusion
and, above all, man’s reluctance to face himself
beyond his prime.

The film, for all its underlying themes and
potential, has a few flaws. For one, it could have
done more to develop some of its emotional
content, particularly with its main actor, john
Waters. To his credit, Waters is strong enough to
take the viewers on his character’s difiicult jour-
ney[...]at he is going through and what
has possessed him to make a comeback at 40.

And while Guy Pearce holds his own in Heaven[...]at
wooden and self-conscious, having being unable
to find sufficientspace to develop from the mould
of a pretty-boy, gelled-haired musician who[...]his old man and writes songs in dimly lit
rooms.

The same can be said of the wall of silence
between father and son. It would be a risky over-
simplification to suppose the two are at logger-
heads because of Dad’s unyielding envy[...]n’s developing musical ability. But that is all the
viewer can assume because the script merely skirns
the surface of their emotional deadlock. Attempts
are made to create some bonding between the
pair, particularly during a tender scene when the
younger one strolls in unseen to find his parents
watching a home movie of him as a child gazing
at the figure of a loving father strumming a guitar.
Bu[...]turns and walks
away still unseen, one wonders if the scriptwriters
missed an opportunity for some important char-
acter development. ..

The film takes the father-and-son relation-
ship forward a massive b[...]em-
ber. Itwaswithdrawn after failing towithstand the
avalanche of big-budgetAmerican films released
to cash in on pre-Christmas film audiences.
Boulevard Films was disappointed with both the
timing of the film's release by Hoyts, aswell as its
poor to lukewarm reception by most reviewers.

The film is, at times, predictable and clichéd.

JOHNNY D[...]

One of the best things that can be said of
Heaven Tonightis the mileage it has achieved from
a budget of less than $2 million. The cast is more
than competent, from the rock solid performance
of Rebecca Gilling as Dysart’s patient, ever-loving
wife down to Sean Scully’s role ofa slick record
company sha[...]tor of photography David Connell have com-
bined to give the film a good look and a strong
sense of place; the pubs, the old rock venues and
city skylines are unmistakeab[...]made good use of lighting and brood-
ing shadows to accentuate the moods in the
Dysart household.

Another strength is its soundtrack. Most of
the songs in the film were written and performed
byjohn Waters and Guy Pearce, both of whom
confess to wanting to marry their musical inter-
ests with acting. Expe[...]ew
actors of recent times, namely Richard Gere in
The Cotton Club and Robert Duvall in Tender Mer-
cies. Whether or not you go for the type of music
in Heaven Tonight, the lyrics are used to help tell
a story and are far preferable to the contrived
deception of lip—synching songs in movies.

At the very least, the film is an authentic
document about the evolution of Australian rock
‘n’ roll and the people who have come and gone
in it. Much ofits content is conjured via first-hand
experiences of the writer, Frank Howson, who in
an earlier day wrote[...]In an interview with Cinema Papers, How-
son said the story was based on an amalgam of
parts from the lives of performers such as john
Paul Young, The Easybeats and Mike Rudd set in
a period, presumably the early 1980s, when rec-
ord companies did notwant to know about come-
backs.

While Heaven Tonighthas not lived up to the
expectations of its creators locally, Boulevard
Films is optimistic about its forthcoming release
in the U.S. and Europe (and possibly Russia)
where perha[...]Tonight Directed by Pino Amenta. Producer:
Frank I-iowson. Scriptwriters: Frank Howson, Alister
Webb[...]lia. 1990.

M ETROPOLITAN
BRIAN MCFARLANE

or all I know, Metropolitanmight pass as a semi-

documentary on the lives of Manhattan’svan-
ishing debutante set. These are not normally the
kinds of people for whom one expects to feel
great interest, let alone sympathy, but it is the
triumph of writer—direct0r Whit Stillman to take
them, for 98 minutes at least, as seriously as they
take themselves, ifnot for the same reasons. That
he has contrived to do so is ameasure ofthe film's
literacy (it is also literary but that is another
matter) in getting the look and sound right in
virtually every shot.

To unpack that somewhat crowded opening
paragraph. First, having little idea about the au-
thenticity or otherwise of the scene depicted, in
terms of its relation to real life, I find that Metro-
politan creates an extraordinar[...]nsu-
lated place and a possibly vanished time. If the
people were a working—class group, we would
praise such a film for documentary realism. Here,
the frlm’s truth as an ambience study is felt in the
rituals it examines — dances, dinings—out, bridge —
as they impinge on the lives ofeightpeople. Seven
of these have been meeting in a group for some
time as members of the “Sally Fowler Rat Pack“.
The eighth, Tom (Edward Clements), is an out-
sider w[...]osophy, which he gradually sheds as he ad-

justs to the SFRP which accepts him because of
the serious “escort shortage”.

The meetings, mostly held in Sally's (Dylan
Hundley)[...]h people are character-
ized by what they say and the audience is required
to listen very carefully to pick up the differentiat-
ing touches. Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman),
for instance, the SF RP’s apparen tly arrogantleader
emerges both[...]and oddly kind (in his concern for
these “girls at the most vulnerable stage of their
lives. Preppie girls mature slower than others”).
The gentle Audrey (Carolyn Farina), whose firm-
ness and decency provide the film’s moral posi-
tive with the most unobtrusive exactness, talks
with quiet enth[...]rk. Tom
advances Lionel Trilling’s dismissal of the novel
and its foolish premise, then lets slip that he
hasn’t read the novel, and solemnly tries to re-

"PLAYING STRIP POKER WITH AN EXHIBITIONIST
SOMEHOW TAKES THE CHALLENGE OUT OF IT."
WHIT ST|LLMAN'5 METROPOLITAN.

cover his ground with, “You don't have to have
read a book to have an opinion on it". (There is
a touching echo[...]girlfriend, weeps quietly when she sees a
set of the Oxfordjane Austen in Scribner’s win-
dow.)

The talk covers a lot of ground — God, public
trans[...]d social mobility, whether “se-
rious guys tend to be better-looking" — most ofit
conducted with g[...]is a marvellously controlled consis-
tency about the sound of the film, it also looks
greatin the sense of the mise-en-scene's performing
major narratronal functions. The girl’s evening
dresses are all variations on a single theme of
white frothiness, but the small variations in dress
signify importantly in the same way that those in
speech do. The girls wear pearls as a mute sign of
status and belonging; the boys, when not in din-
nerjackets or tails, are in button-down shirts and

preppie—neck pullovers. The film’s observation,
on aural and visual levels, is meticulous. It con-
tributes to our sense ofa tiny sub-culture and to
the ways in which individuality still struggles to
make itself felt in such daunting conformism.
As an ambience study, the film not merely
impresses with its textural richness but with the
quiet, precise irony of its stance. This irony is
often comic as it records, apparently straight-
faced, the higher idiocies of preppie conversa-
tion; it is also generous enough to allow the
characters moments of genuine wit (“Playing
strip poker with an exhibitionist somehow takes
the challenge out ofit"). Mostimportant, though,
in accounting for the f1lm’s tonal complexity is
the underlying note of pathos. Stillman under-
stands very well the vulnerability ofthe seemingly
self-possessed. The group seems to be held to-
gether by its common pursuits and attitudes, but
the fragility of the ties that bind is hinted at from
the earliest scenes. It will take only an access of
r[...]s consequent dislike of Tom for letting her
down) to expose the brittleness of the rituals.
Rick Von Sloneker (Will Kempe), the handsome,
arrogant outsider, who briefly invades the group
and assists at its disintegration, is really no more
than[...]

to Manhattan in the dawn from the decadence of
Von Sloneker’s coastal retreat. "T[...]bic” and too repetitive: “We can’tjust keep get-
ting together with the same people for the rest of
our lives”, says Sally as she goes offwith a roughneck
friend of Rick’s. With the Pack’s eponym gone,
and its “leader” Nick banished up—state to “a
stepmother ofuntrammelled malevolence", with
Cynthia losing her bra and her virtue at Rick’s
place, the group has fallen apart. Charlie won-
ders poignantly if we “were ever really friends with
the girls”. The members of the group seem just to
vanish from each other’s lives, and we're left to
ponder Nick’s wisdom when he said, “You're
gonna have to accept that people from our back-
ground are not doomed to failure.” There has been
a lot of talk about doom and failure running
through the film, but Nick, in one of those differ-
entiatin[...]ned rea-
sonsfor it. This sounds more solemn than the film
is and, though it ends on a sober note of f[...]rgy and Charlie, it is not
solemn. It is — like the best comedy — serious. The
film is, as I have suggested, both ironic and gen-
erous about the lives of its characters.

Itis a long time since[...]at other New York
film, My Dinner with Andre’. The intellectual level
of the talk is, of course, higher in My Dinner with
Andréwhere our interest is sustained in the con-
versation for its own sake as much as for what it
reveals of the speakers. In Metropolitan, the film’s
literacy is in making its characters sound true to
their class and place and temperaments. It is also
literary in its insistence on the verbal as a key
conveyer of information, contrast[...]e, but with clas-
sical Hollywood cinema in which the mute elo-
quence of mise—en-scéneoften “tells” as much as the
dialogue. In its particular kind of literariness,[...]gerald and Evelyn Waugh,.in their chronicling of
the decline of bright young things, and, in films,
Wo[...]MA PAPERS 82

Austen in Manhattan. It shares with the latter a way
of making New York look sensationally beautiful,
here the resultofjohn Thomas‘ lighting ofstreets
and bui[...]WITH KATE
PHILIPPA BURNE

S ome weekendsjust seem to slip by and before
you know it they are over, leaving a feeling
that something happened butwho knows what or
why. Weekend with Kate is that type of weekend.

Husb[...]d Kate (Catherine McClements), organize a
weekend at their ‘shack’ by the beach. He intends
to tell her he is leaving her for another woman;
she intends to tell him that she wants to have a
baby. But Richard’s job as a public-rela[...]interferes,
and Richard and Kate end up spending the week-
end at the shack with world famous rock star,]on
Thorne (jer[...]us, a love triangle is set up. Setin seclusion
by the beach, there is little to interrupt the dy-
namics unfolding between the three characters.

However, a poor script leaves McClements
and Ehlers adrift in the northern reaches of
Sydney Harbour and drives Friels to somewhat
absurd slapstick which rescues the film from
drowning completely.

When I saw the film, a predominantly late
twenties-early thirties audience laughed uproari-
ously at the antics of F riels as he brought Ameri-
can style sit-com to the Australian screen. Friels is
very funny and has all the best lines in the film;
however, he is let down by the weakness of the
other characters and the unevenness of the film
as it veers between being a comic-farce and a
serious look at a love triangle with comic relief.