Cinema Papers no. 26 April-May 1980 (2025)

OCR

water under the Bridge Japanese cinema
PETER WEIR 24 PAGE[...]

— “There are two myths regarding

film vs tape. Firstly, film is more

9 9 expensive. Secondly, film is slower.
f 1 It is my experience that the
0 C a cost of a tape production falls
_ somewhere between a 35 mm and a
16 mm film production. As for
ma a t e meeting those exceptional tight on-
air deadlines, at The Film House,
‘ ’ 9 with good pre«planning and[...]round in less than a week.
“Certainly, tape has the

advantage of instant replay but film
manages to get that extra 10°/o—the
little bit of magic that makes all the
difference. Film people generally
tend to be a little more creative than
tape operators. Possibly due to the
high technological aspects of tape.
Also, without that instant replay
you have[...]’ve got it,

so you always tend to oVer—reach
your ultimate creative standards.

“We always shoot with Eastman

stock from Kodak and we generally
finish on tape master. The[...]this area, there will

always be a happy marriage of the
two mediums.”

Robert Le Tet
Managing Director—The Film House Pty. Ltd.

KODAK (Australasia)[...]

An average year for us at
Film Australia sees the
production of around 100
films and audio-visuals.

As you can i[...]maintain our high
standards without drawing
upon the wide range of film-
making talent available in
the Australian industry
today.

Directors, cameramen,[...]s
and artists — in fact
everybody who gets into the
act, both in front of the
camera and behind.

AUSTRALIAN FILM COMMISSION

With the help of freelance
Film Australians, we’ve
completed important films
such as, Let the Balloon Go,
Who’s Handicapped?, War
Without Weapons and
award winners Hospital[...]m Australia production,
remember that it’s also the
production of Australians
who work in film. Right
across the industry.

FILM AUSTRALIA

W e; «fig ne-‘Our epfsodes forthe other

wt wr f‘*e’%eni" aifdition[...]

State Theatre June 13-28

The World’s New Films

Address: Box 4934, GP[...]

Centre pages

Monograph Series
The Films of Peter Weir
Brian McFarlane Insert
Japanese Cinema[...]llen
A Perspective: 106 Interview: 90
Water Under the Bridge: Igor Auzins 122
Film Reviews
Frontline
Barbara Alysen 139
Harlequin
Jack Clancy 140
The Little Convict
Antoinette Starkiewicz 141
Kramer[...], 8XT.

‘Recommended price only.

Cinema Papers is produced with financial assistance from the Australian Film Commission.
Articles represent the views of their authors and not necessarily those of the editors. While every
care is taken with manuscripts and materials supplied for this magazine, neither the Editors nor
the Publishers accept any liability for loss or damage which may arise. This magazine may not be
reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of the copyright owner. Cinema Papers is
published every two months by Cinema Paper[...]

The results of the recent Australian Film
institute elections were announced at the
20th annual general meeting on March 22.
The new board of directors is: John Fiaus,
Patrick Gordon, Senator David i-lame[...]ive re-standing board members
were elected, while the retiring Barry Jones
MHR and lna Bertrand were re[...]d Albie Thorns.

Senator Hamer has been a senator for Vic-
toria since July 1978. He is also a member of
Parliament's National Education and the Arts
Liaison Committee and is federal president
of the Arts Council of Australia. Albie Thoms
is in independent filmmaker (Palm Beach
and Marlnetll, among others) and is an
author on film.

As the 1979 election results provoked
some controversy over an alleged Mei-
bourne ioading (six of the seven board
members were Melbourne residents), the
AFl has decided to release state voting
break-dow[...]5
Western Australia 90
Overseas 5

Those eligible for the March 1980 election
were:

New South Wales 385
Qu[...]Victoria 428
Western Australia 77
Overseas 2

in the 1979 election. Victorian voters com-
prised only 48 per cent of the total electorate,
yet 71.4 per cent of those elected to the
board were Victorians. Clearly, the Mel-
bourne candldates were popular on a nation-
wide, not state, basis. The same is true in the
1980 election: Victoria and New South Wales
had nearly the same number of voters but
Victoria produced five, as opposed to[...]VERSY

Controvery erupted recently over a section
of the newly-proclaimed Actors Feature Film
Award, 1979, resulting in an unsuccessful
appeal to the Arbitration Commission by
producer Antony l. Ginnane.

For his new production, Survivor, Ginnane
wished to b[...]eorge. Actors and An-
nouncers Equity Association of Australia felt
differently, however, and effectiv[...]ed
section 31A(b) ofthe Award which states that

"The producer shall seek approval from

the union for the importation of overseas

actors for work in film. Such actors must

be of international distinction and merit."
Equity felt[...]innane planned to show that George and
Eggar were of the required standing, but was
not given the chance. The Arbitration Com-
missioner ruled that he had no power to in-
tervene in the dispute and that the wording of
31A(b), while not clear, implied that it was
Actors Equity which should decide what con-
stitutes “international standing".

The dispute raises fundamental issues on
the use of overseas stars. No one, for exam-
ple, can reasonably claim Eggar and George
are not of international standing: both are
among those actors listed in Leslie Haili-
wel|’s The Fi/mgoer's Companion; during the
week before the hearing two Susan George
films were on Melbourne[...](Man-

dingo and Dirty Mary, crazy Larry), as was
The Seven Percent Solution (with Samantha
Eggar); and there was a cinema preview of
Eggar’s new film, The Brood.

As well. Robin Wood, a film critic regarded
by some as of equal standing with F. R.
Leavis, wrote a lengthy article on Mandingo
for Film Comment, where he unequlvocably
affirmed his[...]as
an actress.

88—Cinema Papers, April-May

The issue, therefore, is not what con-
stitutes "international standing”, but whe[...]y should be able to use section
31A(b) to exclude from Australia anyone they
so choose — and not have to answer to
anyone for their decision.

interestingly, producers were given the
chance in 1979 to state their feelings about
the then proposed Award, but this section
was not seriously challenged. One of the
reasons given for this was that the producers
felt the clause covering the use of foreign ac-
tors was restrictive enough, and, con[...]rtual carfe blanche to im-
port whom they chose.

The relevant clause is 31C(b), which states
an additional 25 per cent ha[...]actor's pay (except juveniles) if a
foreign actor is used in the film. And, for
every additional imported artist, there is
another 12.5 per cent loading. This is for a
film "with total Australian creative control,
o[...]nd (if applicable) comple-
tion guarantee." (This is called Category B.) if
the film is

“subject to. creative control with some

overs[...]p-
piicabie) an Australian completion
guarantee",
the rate is 40 per cent, with additional 12.5
per cent loadings. (This is Category C.)

So, in the case of a Category 8 film like
Survivor, had all four for[...]ctor's minimum weekly salary
would have increased from $224.60 to
$364.96. By its actions, however. Equity has
shown it is concerned with more than just
salaries, and that it is not willing to trade
bigger pay packets for a diminished
frepresentation by Australian actors[...].

Discussions on this matter are being held,
and the industry awaits a result which will
have a major effect on Australian films of the
future.

CINEMA AUSTRALIA 1 896-1 956

An Australian film retrospective is in cir-
culation overseas. Prepared with the as-
sistance of the Department of Foreign Af-
fairs, and the support of many organizations
and individuals within the film industry, the
retrospective consists of new prints of 12
features and more than 20 shorts selected
from the National Film Archive, Canberra.
There is also an exhibition of stills and
posters.

The retrospective opened at the National
Film Centre. Tokyo, on March 6, and is to be
followed by a June season in London and a
two-year circuit of European capitals under
the auspices of the international Federation
of Film Archives.

Ray Edmondson, director of the National
Film Library, says he believes the retro-
spective “will play an important international
role in adding the perspective of the past to
an awareness of the present output of one of
the world's oldest film producing countries”.

FILM PIONEERS ORAL HISTORY
PROJECT

The Film Pioneers Oral History Project is a
joint venture between the Australian Film
Commission (which funds the project), the
Australian Film and Television School (which
supplies equipment and administrative
resources) and the National Film Archive of
the National Library of Australia (which
houses the material collected). 3M Australia
Pty Ltd have supplied sound stock free of
charge, and Colorflim Pty Ltd have provided
free laboratory work, except for the stock
cost for composite release prints.

First moves to launch this project were
made in early 1975. at a committee meeting
convened by the AFC. The AFC granted
funds for 35 audio interviews with Australian
film pioneers, with about a third of these to
be also filmed. Names were chosen on the
basis of age and the importance of their con-
tribution to the film industry. None of those
chosen had been interviewed extensively
before.

Following the receipt of funds, the project
got underway in January 1977. Since that[...]erviews have been completed,
with four to follow. The interviewers include
historians, archivists, film academics and
filmmakers. To date, 16 of the interviews
have been recorded by Graham Shirley, who
was employed for six months from July 1979
to co-ordinate the project, conduct inter-
views and bring the scheme as close to com-
pietion as possible. Fell[...]John Hughes. David
Stratton and Chris Long.

Most of the interviewees began their
careers in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and
are either retired or approaching retirement.
Five began their film career in the early silent
period, one as early as 1911.

in most cases, the careers covered
shadow the fortunes, misfortunes and
changing nature of the Australian film in-
dustry from the 1930s to the 1970s. The film
industry has traditionally given rise to the
Jack-of-all-trades, and a high proportion of
the interviewees moved, by necessity, into
more areas than their counterparts in the
U.S. or Britain. For that reason, many of the
interview subjects have had an across-the-
board experience ofthe film industry that few
Australian filmmakers of the future may be
able to match.

The Oral History Project should prove a
valuable reso[...]ing to tapes, reading
transcripts and, in a third of the cases, view-
ing film segments.

Depending on the clearance signed by the
interviewee. the user will be able to quote
from the material, incorporate it Into broad-
casts and compilation films, or simply use It
for background research.

it is hoped that general recognition of the
value of these 35 interviews will lead to a con-
tinuation of the scheme, focusing on the
views and recollections of contemporary
filmmakers, as well as those retired.

SILVER STREAKS

A corollary of the extraordinary increase in
silver prices, from U.S.$5.60 an ounce in
1979 to US$42 in early 1980, has been a
leap in film stock prices. (Photographic film
uses a base of silver particles to form an im-
age.) ln Australia, the cost of Eastman nega-
tive has risen 35 per cent and print stock by
45 per cent. This is on top of a 15 per cent
rise in January.

it the color increases seem dramatic, con-
sider black a[...]ent. Lab costs on black and white are
already out of proportion with color. and the
stock increase is turning black and white into
a luxury no one, save Woody Allen, can at-
ford.

The main effect of these print stock in-
creases on the industry is in distribution
where executives will have to ret[...]e
piecemeal showings, re-cycling a limited
number of prints. This will inevitably lead to
print deterioration and customer dissatis-
faction.

CRUISING

The most controversial film to be released
for some time is William Friedkln‘s Cruising.
Starring Al Pacino, the film involves a cop
who pretends he is homosexual and in-
filtrates the gay scene in the hope of solving a
murder.

When first released at the Sack Cinema 57
in Boston, more than 500 gay protesters
picketed the cinema. Similar demonstra-
tions have been seen wherever the film has
opened. Activist Jim Walker commented:
"We are concerned that the film will result in
more violence against gay peo[...]as
agreed to add a prologue stating: “This film
is not intended as an indictment ofthe homo-
sexual world. it is set in one small segment of
that world, which is not meant to be
representative of the whole." But this pro-
iogue is not expected to cool matters.

Distributors of the film have also been feel-
ing the pressure. Though only "Fi”-rated (i.e.,
those u[...]), some exhibitors
feel it should be rated “X". The scenes of
homosexual rape and beatings are con-
sidered sho[...]s have posted
signs outside their cinemas showing the film
which read: ‘‘In the opinion of the manage-
ment this picture should be rated ‘X’[...]18 will be admitted." Other cinema
chains across the U.S. are refusing to even
handle it.

Even the bureaucrats have entered the
fray: Fiobin McCormick, special assistant to
the Mayor of Boston on gay community af-
fairs, for example, tried to stop the film from
showing in certain areas of the city; he was
unsuccessful. Then, in Chicago. the Motion
Picture Review Board approved screening of
the film for general audiences, meaning even
young children could see it.

One side effect of all the fuss is that the
MPAA is using it as fuel to toughen its
classifications. A recent example is Going
Steady. which gained an “Ft" on the basis of
one swear word. To avoid an estimated big
drop in the box-office, the film was re-cut.

This, and other cases, is leading to a more
conscious policy of tailoring films for a
specific rating. Too much money is at stake
to take any risks with the MPAA and its
decisions

EXCERPTS: ANNUAL REPORTS

1. New South Wales Film Corporation

The 1978/79 annual report of the New
South Wales Film Corporation has been
tabled. in the introduction, the report states
that 1978/79 was:

"an exciting year.” it "saw the release of

Newafront and the completion of filming of

My Brilliant Career . . .

“But 1978-79 was also a year of
challenge for the NSWFC for. . . the nature
of the Australian film industry underwent
profound chang[...]mgoers are now treating Austra-
lian films as one of many leisure choices
available and not. as in som[...]their entertainment else-
where.

“As a result, the NSWFC is evolving new
policies and strategies to meet this and
future challenges.

“Most importantly, the NSWFC is plac-
ing a greater emphasis on the script-
development stage of fiimmaking. in 1978-
79, the NSWFC advanced $155,872 (less
$20,828 transferred[...]ct development. com-
pared to $18,630 in 1977-78. The 1979-80
figure will increase by a factor of three or
four.”

These sentiments mirror much of what
was said by Jack Lee in the 1978-79 South
Australian Film Corporation annual report,
as does the following passage:

“Another major challenge which the
Australian industry has had to face in the
last year lies in the need to open up more
overseas markets for our motion pictures.
Most middle-of-the-road Australian films
cannot recoup their budgets on the Aus-
traiian market.

“The Australian population represents
only six per cent of the U.S. and Canadian
markets. while Australian production costs
are in the order of 30 per cent of costs
(excluding Hollywood-style super-star
salaries) in those countries.

“Despite the success of some Austra-
lian features overseas, the NSWFC
acknowledges and supports the efforts of
Australian-based producers and produc-
tion compa[...]n partnership with producers and its
consultants. the NSWFC attracted from
the private sector almost $1 million in
investments a[...]s. To secure and protect this
private investment, the NSWFC took a se-
cond position on returns rather than
recouping its own investment at the same

Order your copies now.

publications

I The New Australian Cinema
See the reverse side for details.

2 Australian Motion Picture Yearbook 1980
See full page advertisement this issue.

Please send me D copies of The New Australian
Cinema at $14.95 per copy, post paid‘.

Please send me [:1 copies of the Australian Motion
Picture Yearbook 1980 at $25.00 per copy, post paid*.

' In Australia only. For overseas rates see the Australian Motion Picture Yearbook ad. this issue[...]ostcode........

Find cheque/money order enclosed for 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ma[...]

/ In this first major work on the Australian film industry’s dramatic

' rebirth[...]ine to provide a lively and entertaining
critique of the films. Illustrated with 265 stills, including 55 in full color, this
book is an invaluable record for all those interested in the New Australian Cinema.

Published by[...]Papers, this book has a recommended retail price of $14.95.
By filling in the form on the reverse side you can secure a copy post pa[...]

During 1978/79, income was $1,246,768
($428,050 in 1977/[...]penditure
$1,709,577 ($421,332), giving a deficit of
$462,809 ($6,718). In reference to the deficit,
the report states that:

“The NSWFC adopts commercial ac-
counting proce[...]tment over a three-year
period, writing down half the investment in
the initial year of release. The deficit of
$462,809 in 1978-79 is accounted for by
the writing down or amortisation of invest-
ments by $681,350.”

The balance sheet of the NSWFC, as at
June 30, 1979, shows total funds of
$3,425,429, of which $2,370,662 is repre-
sented by investment in the film industry.

Apart from all the NSWFC's feature films
activities (including maintaining the Austra-
lian Films Office Inc. in Los Angeles, sup-
porting the Australian Film Awards and
launching several overseas marketing exer-
cises), there is the Government Documen-
tary Division. During 1978/79 it managed and
administered about 30 projects to a gross
value of $212,000.

2. Tasmanian Film Corporation

Under a drawing of the Tasmanian Devil,
which is captioned "Don’t let the size fool
you", is printed the conclusion to the Tas-
manian Film Corporation 1978/79 annual
report:

“The first 22 months of the TFC’s opera-

tions have really been a period of shake-

down and establishment. The TFC is ex-
tremely pleased with the progress made
towards establishing a solid base for the
film industry in Tasmania. Our studio com-

plex is of an international standard and a

real asset to the state. The quality of

production is improving all the time, as is
the expertise of our local filmmakers and
actors."

During 1978/79 the TFC recorded a loss of
$59,355 (compared to $58,588 in the nine
months of operation in 1977/78). Income was
$1,110,175 (of which $830,502 came from
motion film production and $164,910 from
still photographic work) and expenditure was
$1,169,530 (after deduction of the $84,511
capitalized to feature films).

Significantly, $43,222 of the loss is at-
tributed to the Marketing Section. An ex-
panding operation, which did yield $62,557 in
revenue, it is expected to take two to three
years to break even.

Another initiative of the TFC was the pilot
filmmakers attachment scheme. Funded by
the Australian Film Commission to the
amount of $48,000, the scheme, started in
March 1979, attaches four filmmakers to the
TFC for one year. Each filmmaker receives a
weekly stipend and $5000 to produce a
film(s) of his or her choice.

Also raised in the report was the Tas-
manian Fiim Corporation Amendment Act

CENSOFISHIP

In a recent interview, the Commonwealth
Chief Censor, Lady Duckmanton (Janet
Strickland), detailed changes to the film cen-
sorship listings, whereby codefied reasons
for a decision would be given. Despite claims
that these changes would clarify the cen-
sorship process, the reverse has happened.
The system is inconsistent, confusing and
cosmetic in purpose.

At the top of the new listings is an “ex-
planatory key” (see below).

After each film title, a "reason for decision“
is printed, using the above symbols. Thus,
the “NRC ‘-rated it cappotto (The Overcoat)
receives S(i-l-j), meaning the film contains
sex of an infrequent, low intensity and
justified nature.

By scanning the listing (p. 118). one should
be able to determine what motivates the
Censorship Board to give a particular clas-
sification. For example, no “NRC"-rated film
is found to have any gratuitous sex, bad
language or violence. Also, the explicit-
ness/intensity level never rises above low.

The “M" classification is not so clear-cut
and inconsistencies abound. Take, for exam-
ple, Love Swindler: this is rated but it
has the same code — S(i, I-j) — as the
“NRC -rated The Overcoat.

Another example is The Mistress. This

1979, which was passed on July 12, 1979.
This act:

"1. Amends Section 14(7) (c) of the Prin-
cipal Act to allow funds set aside in ac-
cordance with Section 14 to be used
for making payments in reduction of
the capital indebtedness of the TFC to
the state and to other tenders.

2. Amends Section 16 (2) of the Principal
Act to authorize the Treasurer to
guarantee the repayment by the TFC
to tenders of principal moneys to a
maximum of $2,000,000."

(An interview with the director of the TFC,

Malcolm Smith, appears on pp. 112-15 and
155 of this issue.)

3. Australian Film institute

The Australian Film Institute 1978/79 an-
nual report shows that income for the period
was $788,796, of which $288,750 (36.6 per
cent) was received as a subsidy from the
AFC. Excess of expenditure over income

after extraordinary items was $31,481. Ac-
cumulated funds, as of June 30, 1979, were
$211,610.

Rentals received by the Vincent Library
totalled $91,563, of which $76,862 (84 per
cent) was returned to the filmmakers and
copyright holders. Print sales came to $8700.

Admittances at the Longford, the AFl's
Melbourne cinema, totalled $52,031, which
compared to the $17,976 from the State
(Hobart) and $48,482 from the Opera House
(Sydney).

CALIGULA OPENS

After years of delays, court actions and
public squabbling, the $17 million Caligula
has finally opened.

Due to[...]re, no major
distributor was approached to handle the
film in the U.S. and it was independently

V1

‘.‘‘r'

‘-3:
' ‘t. {A J,’

‘-1

Scene from Frank Hurley's documentary, Pearl: and Savages, which
has been re-constructed by the National Library, Canberra.

gained an "R" and an S(i-l). Apart from the
Board failing to determine whether the sex
was gratuitous or justified, the rating is iden-
tical to the above-listed films. Now a similar
code covers three classifications.

One could go on detailing the many incon-
sistent ratings, but there are more fun-
damental questions. Why does the Board
consider sex, violence and language as the
only indiscretions worth singling out in its ex-
planatory key? What about films advocating
repression of human rights, or presenting
exploitation, on a pe[...]cal level,
as something desirous?

A second issue is the process whereby the
Board decides what is justified and what is
gratuitous. For example, it could be easily
argued that a shot of people having inter-
course is justified in a sex comedy, but not in
a war drama. But does the Board consider a
sex comedy gratuitous in itself?

Thirdly, there is the breaking down of
explicitness into "low”, “medium" and “high”.
An application of these categories to every-
day life shows how sil[...]sity dinner party" or “l
think Bill's treatment of Marjorie has reached
a high intensity of personal cruelty, but, to be
fair, these outbursts are infrequent and
justified.” Stupid, of course, but if such labels
are inappropriate to r[...]ship issue has been

Lady Duckmanton's request to the
Remuneration Tribunal for salary increases
for the nine members of the Board. Lady
Duckmanton, who criticized her own salary,
is earning $28,678 a year.

Two films to meet with censorship
problems are Yves Yersin’s Les petites
fugues (The Little Escapes) and David
Blyth’s Angel Mine. Lee petites fugues was
classified “R" because of a brief, though not
visually explicit, sex scene. Lady
Duckmanton defended the decision by say-
ing that it was not the visuals that were the
problem, but that the girl has a gasping
orgasm. Unable to afford the cost and
lengthy delay of an appeal, the distributor, Le
Clezio Films, decided to cut the scene. The
new version was then classified

Angel Mine, a New Zealand short, was
rated "R” after the deletion of a sequence.
Biyth claims, however, that the cut was
made without his approval. This raises the
difficult issue of whether a distributor should
be allowed to make cuts in a film to satisfy
the censorship rulings of individual
countries. In many distribution contra[...]are clearly spelt out; in others,
not at all.

in the case of Les petites fugues. the dis-
tributor secured the director's permission
before proceeding. This, however, seems to
be the exception, not the rule.

Frequency Explicitness/Intensity Purpose[...]. . . , . . . . . . . . . . .. i r I m n j g

THE QUARTER

-

released in New York on February 1. Analysis
Film Releasing, which is successfully handl-
ing the US. release of My Brilliant Career, is
distributing the film in the rest of the country.
As for the credits, Gore Vidal's name has
been deleted from the title, as has his name
for screenplay. it now reads, "Adapted from
an original screenplay by Gore Vidal".
Tinto Brass is not listed as director (there
is no director's credit), but he is credited with

“principal photography". This credit is
followed by one stating “editing by the
production".

Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse
which financed the film, is listed as having
directed and photographed, with Giancarlo
Lui, "additional scenes”.

Guccione is quick to denounce the “hard-
core pornography" tag several critics have
landed on the film. He claims the film is "a
landmark cinematic event that combines the
film industry's two extremes: the high-
budget. artistically-crafted establishment at
one end, and the more freewheeling ‘other
side‘ of the industry that takes advantage of
our hard—lought liberties". Anyway, he adds,
"there is only about six minutes of actual
graphic sex in the film".

Guccione, not wishing to toe the MPAA
line and self-impose an “X” certificate, has
advertised the film as being open only to
adults over 18 years. This was not enough to
satisfy the censorship lobby, however, which,
headed by the Morality in Media group, filed
suit to have the film declared obscene and
confiscated. The action was thrown out by
the New York court. But under the Supreme
Court’s Miller decision, which makes cen-
sorship a local issue, the film can be charged
with obscenity by local courts. As in Aus-
tralia, there is no final, federal decision.

APPOINTMENTS

Geoffrey Gardiner, a former director
(policy) of the Department of Veterans’ Af-
fairs, Canberra, has been appointed director
of the Melbourne Film Festival. Gardiner
takes over from Erwin Rado, who was direc-
tor for 25 years.

Damien Benson is the new business
manager at the Australian Film institute.
Benson was previously a lecturer in ac-
counting at the Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology.

Four new appointments were recently an-
nounced by the Australian Film and Tele-
vision School: Eric Halliday becomes head of
training resources, Byron Quigiey, project of-
ficer for radio training, Pamela Vanneck, a
member of the production management
workshop and Sandra Hall, editor of Media
Briefs.

Bill Gavin, who joined Hoyts Australia after
working as managing director of GTO Films
in London, is to return to Britain. Gavin has
been appointed director of sales for lTC
international.

OBITUARY
CASEY ROBINSON

On December 6, 1979, Casey Robinson
died of cancer in a Sydney hospital. His
name is less well known than the titles of the
films he wrote and was entirely overlooked
by the shamelessly inadequate Oxford Com-
panion to Film.

it was not until the past few years that his
contributions to a generation of Hollywood
films have won the serious critical attention
that they deserve. As a scriptwriter, of
course, he had become accustomed to the
fact of obscurity. And since he did not lay
claim to deserve anything beyond the status
of a competent craftsman, the neglect did not
hurt too much.

His satisfaction could be found in the
knowledge of the popular success of films
made from his screenplays: King’: Row,
Now, Voyager, Dark Victory, The Old Maid,
while the City Sleeps, and many more.

While she scarcely seemed to notice it,
Australia hosted the last few years of Casey's
life. Occasionally. he received invitatio[...]did with charm. humour and concern,
always aware of his obligations to his audi-
ence.

His professional activity briefly resurfaced
with the disaster of Scobie Malone, which he
produced and co-wrote, an[...]d to
believe it. He inhabited his retirement with
the constant hope that he could get another
project off the ground, and he pursued that
goal with his customary energy.

His passing, at the age of 76, occurred
without the fanfare and eulogies that have
accompanied the deaths of many of those
with whom he worked in the prime of his
creative years. It was the way he wanted to
go. His memory deserves r[...]

Woody Allen is not Joffe’s only client, however.
Rollins & Jof[...]ounded with Jack Rollins
25 years ago, handles 10 of the big names in comedy,
including Dick Cavett, Robin[...]ieves in putting long-term
career interests ahead of a quick profit. He speaks
proudly of being able to follow creative, rather than busi-
ness, considerations.

Joffe had just returned from the set of Woody Allen’s
new, and untitled, film when he s[...]ngeles correspondent, David Teitelbaum.

When did your association with finitely a struggling performer.
Woody Allen begin?

How has your working relationship

It was about 20 years 330- H6 with him changed over the years?

was a joke writer and someone
suggested that he write something

for Mike Nichols and Elaine May,
whom we were handlin[...].

Did you realize then how big he
would become?

The talent was always there,
though when he started he was de-

He has matured, so the relation-
ship has changed, in that what he
wants from us now is not the same
as he wanted before, and vice-versa.
Woody has grown to a point where
his own identity is so well estab-
lished that he doesn’t have to rely
on us anywhere near as much.

Is he the same person when he is dir-

ecting a film as he is portrayed on
screen?

Cinema Papers, April-May—9l

No, he is not funny at all. It’s a
deadly serious set; there is no joke-
making.

Away from the set, is he more like
what he is on the screen?

Yes. He is shy, awkward in
groups and generally uncomfort-
able. When he is with friends, how-
ever, he can be himself becaus[...]. Rarely with strangers will he
try to be funny.

After all this time, do you think you
understand him?

I understand most of him. My
God, after 20 years together I
would have to.

Ours is a management firm that
works on a very strong cre[...]ose relationships.
Nobody has left our management
for years and years; that is a pretty
good record. Billy Crystal has been
with[...]m Posten 24 and “Mork”
(Robin Williams) since the day he
started.

Has being a manager helped you as
a producer?

No question about it.

Is there ever a conflict between the
two?

I am going through this with a
client at the moment, and I have
decided not to produce his wor[...]won’t negatively affect their
work. Take Mork, for example,
who is in Malta at the moment
doing Popeye.

Did you see Jules Feiffer’s script for
“Popeye”?

Yes, and I thought it was
wonderful. Robert Altman (the dir-
ector) has promised to stay close to
the script; it is not an improviz—
ational film. We have absolute high
hopes for the film. Larry, who is
one of my partners, called me from
Malta yesterday and said all the
footage was very high.

So, your heart is in the manage-
ment side; you do the production
side because it helps protect your
clients . . .

Usually, yes. Occasionally I do a
film that has nothing to do with any
of my clients.

You have to deal with studio execu-
tives, directors, writers, agents —
the whole gamut. Do you have dif-
ferent ways of dealing with these
people?

No, I am who I am. After 25
years of dealing with all these
people you have mentioned, one’s

92——Cinema Papers, April-May

persona is established and you stay
who you are. I deal a li[...]erent.

We are very hard on our clients,
and that is why the relationships
last for so long. They know we are
not going to tell them they are good
when they’re not, or that a script is
good if it isn’t.

Why did you go to United Artists
when you started producing for
Woody Allen?

A man named David Dicker was
there and he gave Woody and me
the opportunity to do films with the
least ofinterference. It was an attit-
ude of “Hey, we trust you, go do
your film”.

Is it true Woody Allen takes a cut in
salary to main[...]edom?

Yes. Money isn’t important to
Woody, but the film is. U.A.
doesn’t even have script approval,
which is quite amazing. Wejust de-
scribe an idea to them. We might,
as a courtesy, show the script to
some of our friends there, but never
for approval.

What was the first Woody Allen
film you did at U.A.?

Bananas. The only condition they

put on it was that we do the film for
x number of dollars.

Have any other studios tried to
tempt you away?

7 Every one of them. They would
like a bidding war to go on to get

Woody. Right now, his contract is
up at U.A.

Is he going to renew it?

Director and writer Woody Allen, who is
produced and managed by Charles H. Joffe.

Robin Williams. of Mark and Mindy, who is
one of Joffe’s clients. Williams is currently
filming Popeye in Malta.

Woody Allen in a scene from Annie Hall,
which Joffe produced.

We haven’t made a decision.

What would be a typical Woody
Allen budget?

Up until Manhattan, the most we
have ever done a film for was
$4,100,000, which was for
Manhattan. But because the cost of
living has gone up, and all the union
negotiations, that $4 million would
now be $6 million. The film we are
doing at the moment is about $8 or
$9 million. Two years ago, we could
have done it for about $6 million.

Has it a similar theme to “A[...]anhattan”?

It is a little bit different.

Which film has been the biggest
commercial success so far?

It will end up being Manhattan.
Annie Hall is second to that, and it
had the advantage of winning an
Academy Award.

And the biggest failure?

There have been none that have
lost money. The ones that made
the least money are Interiors and
Bananas.

It was re[...]riors” to be a com-
mercial failure . . .

None of us would have been sur-
prised. But we all thought it was
right for him to do something

serious. I hope he does more.

How did the studio react when they
heard he was making a seri[...]hought it was time.

How accurately can you gauge the
success of a film? Are you often sur-
prised?

No, not at all. I know Woody
and I can gauge if something is
good. I also know whether it is
going to expand Wo0dy’s audi-
ence. I am a little better in my gues-
ses than the people at U.A. when
they see a film for the first time.

Does Woody Allen make his films
for an audience?

Never. He doesn’t give five
seconds thought to an audience. He
just hopes he is right.

There are people in this business
whose goal is to have a big box-
office success. But you don’t think
of them as making artistic films.
They are just going for the biggest
numbers they can get. That is not
Woody’s concern. He is not inter-
ested in money. He is interested in
his work, and he hopes his work
wil[...]do a
film with live beautiful naked girls.
But he is not interested.

So, the appreciation of his work by
the people doesn’t affect him?

He likes the fact that people
admire his films, that critics have
been very supportive of him and

CHARLES H. JOFFE

that the European market has now
opened up. Of course he likes that
— he is a realist. One doesn’t want
to write and put it[...]ce.

Were you surprised when “Annie
Hall” won the Academy Award?

Yes, because the competition was
tremendous, from Star Wars to
Turning Point. Ijust thought it was[...]say
and I didn’t even remember, as I
walked off the stage, what I had
said; I was so numb.

When I was a child I used to
stare at the set, or listen to the
radio, and think, “Gee, will I ever
be able to[...]’t believe films
should compete. He feels there is no
logical basis by which to compare
Annie Hall and Star Wars.

Do you think the awards should be
put in categories, like musical or
science fiction?

Then it would get like the
Grammys, where everything is so
broken down that they lose their
importance.

The Academy Awards are sensa-
tional hype for our business, but for
the artist it is confusing. For
instance, this year Norma Rae is
nominated as the best picture ofthe
year, and Sally Field for best
performance by an actress. But
Marty Ritt, who directed it and
who got the performance out ofthe
actress, isn’t nominated. How is
that explained?

Were you surprised “Manhattan”
received so few nominations?

Yes. I expected the film would be
nominated as best picture, and I
th[...]ld be nomin-
ated as best director because he was
the choice ofthe Directors’ Guild of
America. Also, the New York Film

Critics named him best director of
the year.

How much does an Academy Award
mean in cas[...]t varies with every film. I don’t
know how much The Deerhunter
was helped by it.

What about “Annie Hall”?

I would guess it has added about
$5 million in rentals in the U.S.
That would have meant $10 to $12
million mor[...]you think an Academy Award
has a bigger effect in the U.S. or in a
foreign market?

Again, it depends on the film. I
believe the award paved the way for

Cinema Papers. April-May—93

Did the Academy Award give you
any added legitimacy?

Yes. It made it easier for me to
approach people, because the
agents could then say, “Well, you
know he has w[...]No, other than that Diane
Keaton created a style after Annie
Hall.

Do you believe any films have an
impact on social values?

Absolutely. I think The China
Syndrome made a lot of people
aware in a “we better look at this”
sense.

What happened with Annie Hall
was that a lot of people probably
came away with a better under-
standing of breaking up with loved
ones. But I don’t think[...]eople react to personal films
in a personal way.

Is his new film personal?

All his films are. The style and
content are a little different, but it
still came out of Woody.

When is that due for release?
October or November.

Is Woody Allen involved with the
marketing?

He is involved in every facet on
his films. I don’t m[...]how we wanted our films adver-
tised. You look at the posters of
Annie Hall and Manhattan, they
don’t portend co[...]ey?

_ He doesn’t like commercials
interrupting the film and he doesn’t
like them being edited. And, for the

most part, commercial television
requires that.[...]Allen and
Diane Keaton in Manhattan.

I wanted the masses to see Woody
in a different form. I thought it
would expose him to a lot of people

who would remember the early
Woody Allen films.

Page) in Interiors. Right: The wife (Meryl

Streep) who left Isaac for another woman.
Manhattan.

Do you see cable television as
important to the film industry?

Television has always been a big
source of income, and cable tele-
vision is now becoming sizeable.

Some films in the future are
going to rely on television to recoup
their money, and every film
company has the right to sell them.
We have made a deal with Wood[...]hat right; I won’t allow it in
his deal.

This, of course, takes awa a big
source of income, but I am ealing
with an artist who is not concerned
about dollars.

For how much was “Annie Hall”
sold to television?

About $6 million. They ran it
once a year for two or three years.

What other projects are you work-
ing on?

I have Steve Gordon, who I think
is the best comedy writer next to
Woody, and he wants a[...]o, we are setting some-
thing up and Dudley Moore is
going to be in it.

I recently tried an experimental
film called House of God, with Tim
Mathis, Charlie Habe and Beth

CHARLES H. JOFFE

Sonstrom. I don’t know how that is
going to he.

Are you optimistic about the general

direction of the film industry?

Over the next 10 or 15 years the
market place will change. There
will be less theatres but, if cable
takes on the importance that it
appears to be doing, the use of
video discs and tapes increases, the
market place will remain
important.

Among the people you manage,
there are perhaps five potential
Johnny Carson replacements. Is
there any conflict?

No, our clients don’t compete.
Theis starring in a film for
Paramount, and it is going to be a
very big film, called The Serial. If
that film is successful, he might
have a pretty good film career.

But there is still room for a conflict

Sure, but that is talked out very
carefully with every client, in terms
of where they want to go and what
their interests are.

Sometimes, two clients come up
for the same part, but you can’t
help that. Fortunately, we have
built a relationship with our clients
where there is no distrust. In the
interest of all our clients, I wouldn’t
sacrifice one for another. If NBC
wanted David Letterman and not
Ma[...]vice—versa, they
know I wouldn’t sell one out for the
other.

I know that Letterman is going
to do his own show for an hour and
a half a day on NBC in daytime.
So, I don’t believe they are thinking
of moving him to The Johnny
Carson Show, if they are
committing him to[...]ing to talk about, or
even mention, a replacement for
Johnny.

Do you ever feel you are over-
extending[...]cts?

We never take on more than 10
clients; that is a rule for the four of
us. Sometimes I feel I have taken
on too many pro[...]t period passes, I am okay.

Do you feel you need the pressure?

No. I don’t let business interfere
w[...]ght and I don’t give up my week-
ends unless it is an emergency. 1
keep a pretty good balance.

Do y[...]n get through day by day
and enjoy each day, that is it. at

Feature film production during the 1970s was
first the product of a piece of legislation, rather
than an urgency or natural inclination by in-
dividuals to produce their films, come what may.
Before the Australian Film Development Cor-
poration Bill wa[...]ersonal films, and films that reveal
little fear of the cinema superstructure. Feature
films, on the other hand, tend to be regarded as
the pinnacle of one’s cinema career, and seem
designed to be a part of the national identity,
rather than as a vehicle for experiment or per-
sonal expression.

The feature film industry has, therefore,
chosen to align itself to the causes of popular
culture, to promote the possibilities of mass
consciousness (and its obverse of social control).
It is a directive cinema, consistently dogged by
the notions of its ultimate prototype — the
American film.

Against this, the industry’s legislated cause —
“significant[...]efinition. This criteria has
brought with it all the connotations of classic
Australian nationalism, ideas and images more
applicable to the turn of the century than the era
of nuclear reactors.

Nationalism, in its association with the con-
cepts of progress or modernization through the
vehicle of popular culture, can be seen to express
three stages of growth: “tradition, transition and

modernity”.' In the early years of our

1. Anthony D. Smith, Theories of Nationalism, Duck-
worth. London, l97l, p. 89.[...]ated film industry, two basic trends
emerged — the ocker comedy and the period
film — and both can be related to the traditions
of Australian culture and the beliefs of Aus-
tralian nationalism.

A film such as Newsfront, in its ability for
self-criticism and innovation, seemed to indicate
that a period of transition in the Australian
cinema was at hand. Many people expect[...]on to better things,
but every period has an area of overlap. Some
signs can be discerned of a continuation towards
modernity: the films that reflect the real multi-
ethnic and social minority make-up of Aus-
tralian society (though still not entirely cogni-
sant of the complexities ofthe people they might
portray) hav[...]breakthrough
in that themes have at last surfaced from the
underground tradition of social awareness to
reach a large audience.

The National Self-Image
and the Aesthetic of the
Period Film

"Nationalism is an ideological creation rather
than an instinct or a natural law. To be
schematic: I am suggesting that the ethic
creators imposed this doctrine upon their
portrayal of A ustralia, rather than that empiric
study of Australia inspired their nationalism.”

Michael Roe, “An Historic Survey of Australian
Nationalism”, Victorian Historical Magazine.

The films that were produced during the first
few years of the AFDC were predominantly set
within a contemporary framework, yet the ma-
jority dealt in terms of comedy or fantasy, not in
terms of polemic or issues, argument or beliefs.
The few films that followed the stream of con-
temporary realism, initiated by the Common-
wealth Film Unit’s first feature, Three to Go,
were patently unsuccessful in comparison with
the popularity of the ocker formula and sex-
ploitation films.

The hypothesis is that the bureaucratic restric-
tions on feature production[...]iability and significant Australian content) and
the manifest contradictions within Australian
society and politics (the influence of the U.S.
coloring the manner and ability of Australians
to define Australian) ended in film[...]ting to establish “safe” narrative formulas.

The Vietnam issue was not only a catalyst in
the Labor victory of 1972, but was also a part of
a new era of social awareness in Australia, with
the Labor Party initiating many visionary
“Public Sector” schemes. Yet the amount of
controversy over the rate of social and political
change that such policies represented meant that
during these years the image of Australian
society was in a constant state of fiux. The
stability of the consensus self—image of classic
nationalism — white, mono-ethnic, rural[...]ned by
political attention at last being given to the
numerous ethnic and social minorities that com-
posed Australian society.

Equally then, with cinema, the criteria of
“significant Australian content” (though
justifiable in the sense of trying to establish a

Cinema Papers, April-May-97

national cinema and to stem the flow of cultural
derivativeness) was just as hard to construe. A
new resolution of the dilemma of this criteria
became period films, with a large element of
nostalgia — that is, if unable to define what Aus-
tralia is, it can be solved by restating the myths
of what it has been (see Table l).

Though this new emergence of nationalism
was given impetus by the pride and dilemma
engendered by the Labor years, it has been an
almost continual ideo[...]rary and historic argument since its inception
at the turn of the century. The difference lies in
the sophistication ofthe argument and the inten-
sity of its social pervasivenessf A scholarly
debate in Mearzjin will not affect the collective
consciousness in the same way as social change
or an ethic being espoused by popular cultures‘
Conversely, the level of awareness, or intensity,
of the majority of these period films represent a
fairly primitive n[...]y as
an aesthetic, without a congruent fluency in the
ideology from whence it comes.

This is as much tempered by “commercial
viability” or audience considerations as it is a
signal about the intensity of the convictions of
some of Australia’s filmmakers. Yet the situa-
tion is complicated within the Australian cinema
by the lack of any real film tradition and,
therefore, no continuous or consistent represen-
tations of national identity. The resurrection of
the Australian silent film era by archivists (and
its[...]ical that
feature films, in an effort to capture the popular
imagination, would reflect the status quo more
often than challenge it.‘

Significantly the first, and much underrated,
period film, Between[...]nd directed by Michael Thornhill,
it was probably the first Australian feature film
since 1970 that not only involved a significant
“level of argument”,° but also had a certain
timely relevance. The film traces the career of an
Australian doctor from World Wars 1 to 2, and is
set against the background of Australian social
and political change, employing an amount of
analogous imagery between the two. The clarity
of the films arguments tend to be somewhat ob-
scured by the not always successful attempts at
an “alienatio[...]ive
directing style. .

In 1975 a new approach to the period film was
seen in two financial and critica[...]c at Hanging Rock.
These films initiated a style of“textual” films, in
which the “level of argument”, apparent in a
film like Between Wars, is honed away. The
major emphasis, and successful appeal, is in the
level of imagery (drawing heavily on nostalgia
for classic national themes and images), with
even the “level of incident” sometimes sub-

2. Much ofthe interpretation of nationalism is done as em-
piric study of the national character. particularly the
emphasis and abhorrence of suburbia by the new critics
(see Tim Rowse, Australian Liberalism[...]Melbourne, l978) which bore
little relation with the popular self-image. or proof that
there was anyth[...]ervation and interpreta-

tion ofthese films, and is a central problem in the cons-

tant use of the narrative structure. which sets certain
limits upon the approaches to filmmaking.

Moorhouse has written a number of “controversial"

(both style and content) novels, such as The American:

Baby. Futility and Other Animals. The Electrical Ex-

perience and Conference—ville. In comparison with the

reserve of Between Wars, these seem to indicate that

Moorhouse had certain standards to conform to —- the

two styles of writing are markedly different.

6. Peter Harcourt. Six European Directors: Essays on the
Meaning ofFilm Style. Penguin, London, 1975, pp.[...]e Mora Philippe Mora

Don Crombie Joan Long

1976 The Devil’s
Playground

1 976 Break of Day

1 977 The Getting
of Wisdom

Fred Schepisi Fred Schepisi $320,000

Cli[...]s Franklin
Original
Novel by
William Nagle

1 977 The Mango Tree Michael Pate $650,000
$552,000
$700,000
$500,000

$1,200,000

$505,000

Kevin Dobson

1977 The Picture John Power
Show Man

1978 The Irishman

Joan Long

Don Crombie Don Crombie

1978 Weekend of Peter Yeldman
Shadows
1978 The Chant of
Jimmie Blacksmith
1978 Newsfront

Tom Jeffrey

Fr[...]ombe $830,000

$762,000
$600,000

1979 Dawn!
1979 Thethe Aliens
1973 Libido

1975 The True Story of Eskimo Nell

1975 Inn of the Damned
1976 Eliza Fraser

1977 Journey Among Women
1979 The Night The Prowler

The distinction drawn between period films and “costume dramas" is not necessarily a qualitative one For
example, Jim Sharman’s films only use the boundaries of era to convey a framework and then transcends ii[...]tion, its 1950s background
becomes futuristic and The Night The Prowler (screenplay by Patrick White) is only loosely connected to
the 1960s setting, the sense of middle-class family repression and constriction w[...]enced as a youth. It tends to be very much a film of alienation.and timelessness.

In a similar vein, Journey Among Women is a feminist statement and projection, even though it is set
several hundred years in the past.

The choice to make Eliza Fraser a light-hearted “sex romp" and comedy tends to fulfil the real connota-
tions of “costume drama", a period dressed piece[...]

servient to the aesthetic. The final contortion of
this imbalance appeared in the frequent resort of
superimposing a final caption at the end of a
number of period films to explain the fate of
characters or events raised within the plot.’
Period films could be said to reveal a cathartic
element in Australian popular culture, or that
the affirmation of traditional nationalist values
is the external sign of a society in transition. Just
as formative Australian nationalism in the 1880s
and 1890s was based upon a large element oflate
Victorian sentimentality about the fading
pioneer ethos as it faced a new era of urbaniza-
tion, period films in the 1970s have been
nostalgic for a less complicated past. This
variety of nationalism, just as that found in the
sentimentality of many films of the Australian
silent screen, provides a celluloid memento of
loss. Many ofthese films ofthe 1970s have reas-
serted the exclusivist national characterization
(the mono-ethnic social setting relates to the
“White Australia” context of formative
nationalism), with a flattering and importunate
quality of narrative (where the level of argument
is minimized, and the images are unqualified and

7. The best example ofthis can be found in Sunday Too Far
Away. Ostensibly about the events that led up to the
shearers' strike of 1956. called over the removal of the
prosperity bonus because of a drop in the price of wool.
the film does nothing to analyse the motives of the
strike. but becomes entirely involved in the immediate
events and images of the narrative. The final caption
reads: “The strike lasted nine months; it wasn’t the
money so much as the bloody insult!”

appear to be objectified representations, in
which one is rarely led to question the selective
nature of the view of society that film
represents).

These textual films (textual in the sense of
having little interactive qualification or com-
m[...]eir images) have many direct iconic
references to the style and content ofthe Heidel-
berg School of Australian painters (those other
great nationalis[...]s have
also been closely linked with a reflective of the
themes and concerns of Australian literature.
Actually only two of these films (see Table 2)
were made as direct translations of the Aus-
tralian classics to film: Henry Handel Richard-
son’s The Getting of Wisdom (1910) and Miles
Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (published
1901).” Out of the large number of period films

8. The connection between the Heidelberg School and
nationalism has largely bee[...]by Australian
art history. One can trace this to the general acceptance
ofthe pioneering study by William Moore, The Story of
Australian Art. Melbourne, 1934, which is based upon
the supposition that Australian Art begins with the
Heidelberg School. This is also a part of the role that
such a journal as Art in Australia (est[...]rizing these artists and particularly emphasizing
the myth that it all began in the 18805.

9. In the case of the works by Miles Franklin and Henry
Handel Richardson, directors have shown a preference
for the novella-sized works. Nobody has attempted The
Fortunes of Richard Mahony or the Brent of Bin Bin
series. As for the other novels. Thomas Keneally’s The
Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith has some claims to
greatness, but is still flawed; other novels range down to

NATIONA[...]t have been made, only six ofthese have been
shot from original screenplays. The rest are all
adaptations of novels, which collectively repre-
sent a spectrum of literary ability.

The decision to film a novel is obviously made
on a judgment about the quality of the imagery
in the writing. Yet, often it seems as if little
qualitative analysis is given to the values that
many ofthese books imply (often by the simple
process of exclusion). This raises two points.
First, that i[...]writing their own material or doing
adaptations, of a lack of genuine motivation
towards communication through film: i.e., the
absence of a strong level of argument in so many
of these films. Secondly, there is the problem of
transposing the written work into films. These
two problems are linked by the fundamental
differences between the nature of the two
mediums.”

the level of pulp fiction. Perhaps the decision was to film
works with which few people would have the hampering
idea of it being a classic. It may well reflect a poverty of
cinematic fiction.

10. It is interesting to read in Dirk Bogarde’s second volume
of autobiography — Snakes and Ladders, Chatto and
Windus. 1978 — of his experiences making Death in
Venice with Luchino Visconti. They had no script but
shot straight from the novel, both of them having read
it more than a hundred times. If a director of a film is
doing an adaptation of a novel, such familiarity (though
perhaps excessive as mentioned above) must exist for the
fullest realization of nuance and detail. See Table 1 for
the number of directors who have written the screen-
plays.

Table 2: Period Films and Their R[...]James Mccauley to represent a pantheist survival; the repetition of
the bush motif as spiritual centre and sustenance) include: Picnic at Hanging Rock, Sunday Too Far Away,
Mad Dog Morgan. Break of Day, The Irishman, The Picture Show Man, The Mango Tree, The Chant ol
Jimmie Blacksmith, Weekend of Shadows, My Brilliant Career.

Films with working—c|ass themes or egalitarian-based class consciousness include: Sunday Too Far Away,
Mad Dog Morgan, The Picture Show Man, The Irishman, The Getting ol Wisdom, Weekend of Shadows, My
Brilliant Career, Newslront, Caddie. Dawnl, Between Wars.

Films which aren't male-dominated include: Picnic at Hanging Rock. caddie, The Getting of wisdom, My
Brilliant Career, Dawnl. Nationalism is usually seen in terms of masculinity, but all these films involve other

n[...]that are more than Anglo-Saxon or white dominated include: Mad Dog Morgan (has an Aboriginal

friend). Caddie (has a Greek lover), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (has an Aboriginal protagonist). Only
two of the films have made any comment on this state of affairs: the first and the last. Caddie has only one
scene that reveals ethn[...]ut that Greeks know how to enjoy
themselves. None of the barriers that are often found between the two communities are even hinted at.

The closing sequence (before the final caption) from
Sunday Too Far Away.

Cinema Papers,[...]

For instance, a major difference between
literature and film is that the written word exists
in time and film exists in sp[...]eveal thoughts, as they can be written in a book.
The director can give us external signs to imply
the thoughts of the characters (or they can be
completely transposed into dialogue) but one
can never know them. This is the essential am-
biguity of narrative film. In this case, with so
many of the narratives concerned with the con-
flict between an individual/s and the institution
(either social, moral or religious: e.g., Mad Dog
Morgan and the law, or Caddie and marriage),
the fundamental problem (with original scripts
as well) is how to reveal those conflicts, which
often exist[...]to Peter Weir in Picnic
at Hanging Rock, because the main characters,
as originally written by Joan Li[...]lly a trivial work, provided
a marvellous vehicle for film. Weir, in his overt
reverence for Alfred Hitchcock, revels in the
sensations of unease, and the supernatural
quality of the novel suits an emotional and un-
cerebral style of filmmaking.

The opposite of this situation is The Mango
Tree, Kevin Dobson’s adaptation of Ronald
McKie’s overly ambitious epic about life in a
Queensland country town in the years around
World War 1. Set against the supposed maturity
of the main character (a well-off, but mawkish
youth) an[...]lust, etc., there are a few cameo-part gems, but
the overall effects are very scattered. This was a
particular problem in the scripting and casting
of the youth (Christopher Pate) who was given
inanities to utter and kept a fixed expression of
amazement, no matter what he confronted.
Hence, we could never know what he thought, or
if he was maturing.

The question of World War 1, and Australia’s
call to arms, was mainly a vehicle for the
“Australianization” of one character (played by
Robert Helpmann), an outcast from his wealthy
British family. He is made to declaim in a speech
at a patriotic rally all the reasons why we should
be proud of our country (there is no analysis of
his position or the private thoughts that made
him reach his nationalistic conclusion).

Another example of the inevitable shift in
emphasis between the change from novel to film
can be found in The Getting of Wisdom and My
Brilliant Career. Both have a woman as the
protagonist and both stick closely to the major
events of their original, but the films tend to
minimize the central feminist themes (albeit in
nascent form) of women rebelling against the
role that society and their era demanded of
them. Instead, both films emphasize the more
recognizably Australian preoccupation with
class, those democratic and egalitarian beliefs of
nationalism.

Henry Handel Richardson’s Laura, in the film
version, is a poor girl at an expensive school
made to feel shame for her humble origins. She
is the ill-mannered country yokel, who “saves”
herself socially by being a gifted pianist, which
no amount of class barrier can deny; her talent
transcends the class problem. Yet in the novel,
she is also the girl who yearns to run and do
“unfeminine” things, symbolized in the film by
her final run through the park the day she leaves
school. But this can only give a small indication
of the depth of repression that had irked her all
those years. .[...]arzt Career was written in
an adulatory imitation of Henry Lawson, with
constant references to the greats — Paterson
and Gordon — and with all the unconscious

l l. D. R. Burns, The Direction: of/1 ustralian Fiction, Cas-
sell, 1975, p. I6.

l00[...]wners in Philippe Mura‘s Mad Dog Morgan.

marks of her era (written at the age 16): e.g.,
references to the undesirable Chinese, and a
burning desire to become one of the true
Australians, the rural workers, the people who
made Australia “great”. All this is related in the
form of society’s desirable role — marriage —
against which is Sybylla”s desire for something
more than just marriage —- a literary career.
(The irony is that Richardson as well as Franklin
had to write under male pseudonyms.) The film
does not make its points as strongly as the novel;
it is rather a cleaned—up love story with a twist:
she says “No.” It makes very strong use of the
class theme instead, with beautiful contrasts in
the art direction between the wealthy grazing
land and the land of the real Australians (Law-
son’s heroes) — arid, rugged and menacing.

Interestingly, most of the films about women
(except Picnic which was more or less a collec-
tive view of them) follow the Lawson tradition”
— that a woman can become the subject of a
story if she takes on and copes with the male
role. Obviously, then, this dictum also has af-
finities with the film Caddie.

Caddie, the story of a woman who leaves her
husband (because he’s ha[...]Grandma) and Christopher Pate
(Jaimie) in a scene from Kevin Dobson’s film adapta-
tion of The Mango Tree.

the children and goes to work as a barmaid to
support her family during the Depression years,
actually gives a stronger sense of the discrimina-
tion by society against the lone mother than
either of the other two films. But Caddie, too,
has a cleaned—up commercialism (though the
source was hardly more inspiring), so while these[...]ned with,
and hampered by, their source material. The
novel and film offer totally different modes of
representation of conceptual consciousness.
These films, dominated by the literary tradition
of the narrative, can only register the external
events of plot from point to point in space. The
use of film techniques and certain styles can give
indications of the internal world of the
characters within a narrative; but period films,
in their consistent use of naturalistic style (with
few exceptions), have been devoid of the stamp
of personal consciousness of the filmmaker.

The choices to create the microcosmic pasts
that are illustrative of basic traditional
Australian values, without a co[...]Phillip Hinton as John and Helen Morse as Caddie
during the break-up sequence. Don Crombie’s Caddie.

To illustrate some points, I want to
refer to the theme of "self against
society" in the later work of Stanley
Kubrick.

It must be emphasized that if "[...]Adrian Martin would have come
to learn about such American auteurs
as his article endorses (Douglas Sirk,
Vi[...]ichard Fleischer)
without Sarris’ confrontation of the
American critical establishment, which
began 15 years ago.

More to the point, Martin believes that
Sarris‘ “underlying critical method is ex-
tremely underdeveloped". No mention is
made of what Sarris himself calls his
"relatively pluralistic aesthetic in which
the very diversity of artistic styles is
counted a blessing‘’.5 In fact, Martin’s
concept of “critical method" is something
of a vulgarism which immediately places
him at cross purposes with his subject.
Would anyone wish to talk of, say, Jean
Flenoir’s under-developed (or over-
developed) “artistic method”?

Again, it is Sarris who quotes Renoir’s
rueful remark that h[...](Grand Illusion) in 1936
as his statement against war, and in 1939
Europe went to war. It seems that writers
who invoke "critica[...]ous.

To claim, as Martin does, that “politics

is inside every part of our experience of
any film — our looking, hearing, enjoy-
ing, thinking", is to propagate a serious
distortion. For one thing, what we ex-
perience in any film is more than
balanced by what we experience outside
it. Let’s call this reality-testing. For
another thing, to speak of the film ex-
perience as ‘‘political'’ is to say neither
more nor less, so far as I can judge, than

1. The Sovereignty of Good, Routledge and

Kegan Paul, p.1_

2. Quoted by Anthony Burgess, author of A
Clockwork Orange.

3. “My Criticism, My Politics", American Film,
Vol. 3, No, 4, p. 54. Sarris‘ article forms
the basis of the first chapter in his book,
Politics and Cinema.[...]nema Papers,
February—March 1980. Quotations in the
text and not footnoted here are from
Adrian Martin's article.

5. Sarris, p. 54.

Ken[...]Politics”

(Cinema Papers, No. 25)

./.$i" an

"The anti-B.F. Skinner thesis” of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.

that an individual‘s entire life history is
‘‘political‘’. And even that is dubious. Just
how, for example. are sleeping and
dreaming political experiences?

Actually, Martin seems keen to deny
what might be called an individuaI’s sub-
jective self. He would define the self as
"the sum of many and varied deter-
minations that have nothing to do with
the individua|’s choice or action”. Does
he realize what an extreme position he is
adopting? Most psychologists would
place the truth-of-the-matter somewhere
between the polarities of B. F. Skinner's
behaviourism and Carl Rogers’
humanism. For my part, my sympathies
lie with the humanist camp, but I
acknowledge the powerful role of social
forces.

And here, in passing, I should point
out that Martin rightly criticizes my con-
tribution to the ‘Film and Politics’ broad-
casts where I apparently indicated the
message of Luchino Visconti's The
Damned to be the humanist one “that the
individual can transcend politics (In this
case, Nazism) and find himself”.
Whatever my admiration for the religious
faith of certain Nazi victims (especially
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, author of Letters
and Papers from Prison, I certainly would
not wish to ascribe suc[...]particularly daunting work
whose ‘found hell’ is even less accessible
than the ‘lost paradise’ of its companion-
piece, Death in Venice.

I have been advocating a common-
sense, non-polemical reading of films
(very possibly remembering Renoir‘s
pleasure at finding himself in accord with
that most tolerant of religions, Hin-
duism). I have to make a further[...]ademic Lesley Stern which
might equally have come from, say,
Roland Barthes:

. . it cannot be assumed that there is a true

reality which can be captured Any ac-

tivity of subverting commonsense notions of

reality requires a dismantling, breaking
apart, of the homogenized discourse of
patriarchal linguistic structures."

I think Iris[...]on
and reality isn't so unknowable. I am
reminded of Barthes’ essay in
Mythologies on the famous Dominici
murder case in France where the
‘educated’ judge is taken to task for
presuming to converse without scruples
with the accused, a 76 year-old ‘illiterate’
peasant farmer. (‘'0 wonderful self-
assurance of classical education, in
which shepherds, without[...]with judges!"°) Whatever
Barthes’ point about the unfairness of
institutionalized language, the fact is that
Gaston Dominici was guilty of murder; he
was found guilty by the majority vote of a
French jury.

It is also Barthes who elsewhere in
Mythologies waves a[...]ring), sup-
posing that “if one removes history from
them, there is nothing more to be said
about them.”’ Whereas[...]“no artist can
stand outside history in search of ‘beauty
and truth’ much responsible art move[...]universality. To cite an extreme
instance, there is the work of James
Joyce in literature.

In film, I doubt that anyone has suc-
ceeded as brilliantly in coming close to
the deliberately ‘timeless’ as Stanley
Kubrick with his costume drama Barry
Lyndon.

In a new book, A Cinema of Lane-
liness, Robert Kolder writes:

“More profoundly than A Clockwork
Orange, Barry Lyndon examines the easy

6. Mythologies, Paladin, p. 44.
7. op. cit., p. 101.

cliches of ‘individual freedom‘ and societal
necessities. Barry, somewhat like Alex, suf-
fers from an attempt to exert his own vitality
within a soc[...]truth" whose
filmed statement conceals a minimum of
vested interests. In fact, perhaps the only
one I can honestly acknowledge is
Kubrick’s ego — and how splendidly he
has sho[...]esthetics and meaning, act as powerful
signifiers of each other in a way which in-
dicates Kubrick’s advanced self-
integration. A minor instance is the scene
one afternoon in which Barry finds Nora
Brady flirting with his rival, Captain Quin,
and the dying sunlight signals the demise
of Barry’s hopes of ever winning Nora for
himself?‘

Throughout the film, Kubrick’s control
of lighting and sound is marvellously
acute, but it also exactly matches the
stages in Barry’s ‘progress’. And
because the film is about human frailty in
all its aspects, even the precisely-
recorded economic facts find their ul-
timate point of reference literally in
Barry’s person.

I cite Kubrick’s film at length basically
because of what I see as its scrupulous
fidelity to the self as recorder and partial
Instigator of experience, which suggests
to me a legitimate pos[...]ith an exaggerated
passivity, perhaps to register the
character as more sinned against than
sinning. Whereas Alex in A Clockwork
Orange is given by Malcolm McDowell a
special robustness, n[...]ighlight
Kubrick’s anti-B. F. Skinner thesis.)

Of course, Adrian Martin favors the
work of an altogether different film-
maker, Nagisa Oshim[...]point no wish to contest his choice. All
power to what Sarris calls “the music of
individual voices".‘°

What I would like to note in conclusion
is the reading given another of Martin’s
favorite films, Richard Fleischer’s Man-
dingo, in the British magazine, Movie.“
Mandingo was made in the same year
(1975) as Barry Lyndon, and seems to
have received a drubbing from the
British as well as American press for
what they called its “absurd cinematic
cliches and phony history". (It is set in a
slave-breeding plantation in Louisiana,[...]ake no mistake, I side with Martin on
this one to the extent of considering
Mandingo an excellent film. It strike[...]in common with Barry
Lyndon which, come to think of it, wasn't
too well received by some sections of the
press either. Notably, both films revolve
around[...]gated by their respective patriarchal
societies.

What I find most disturbing about the
20-page defence of Mandingo in Movie is
that it is given over to an exegesis of the
film's essentially Marcusian dynamics
with no reference at all to the superb
visuals and only one brief acknowledg-
ment of the engaging Maurice Jarre
score. If this represents the measure of
the magazine's “critical method", then
perhaps it is no wonder that they should
turn a blind eye (and a deaf ear) to
Kubrick. For, as I have tried to indicate,
the authentic individuality of Barry
Lyndon is its politics and its aesthetics.
There is no gap. *

8. A Cinema of Loneliness, Oxford University
Press, p. 13[...]

Tom Ryan

The opening shot of Promises In The Dark
looks down a highway in the mid-West of the
U.S. and establishes a motif which is perhaps the
most frequent of all in recent American cinema:
the road. A subsequent series ofshots introduces
the film’s central character, Dr Alexandra Ken-
dal[...]ense ofclaustro-
phobia which persists throughout the film.

Enclosed in her car, flicking the radio from
station to station, her face and her gestures
speaking of frustration, the impression is of a
woman trapped. The deliberate manner of her
driving suggests a belief that she is under threat,
the extended glance at a couple embracing in a
passing car providing a clue to the nature of that
threat. Her eye contact with the female of the
couple forces her to look away, as ifshe has seen
something that she shouldn’t.

The idea of the journey, introduced here, re-
mains implicit throughout the film, as Dr Ken-
dall finds herself forced into s[...]room to withdraw. Her battle
with them takes her, from a self-imposed isola-
tion, to the tentative beginnings of a new contact
with the living.

You started your production career
working in live television in New
York, producing programs like
“The Kaiser Aluminum Hour”,
“Philco” and “Playhouse 90”. Do
you think of that now as a con-
structive beginning?

Yes. In those early days,
television in the U.S. wasn’t as big
a commercial enterprise as it is
now, and there was a great deal of
creative freedom. It attracted a lot
of young people from colleges, who
had been part of drama depart-
ments around the country and then
worked in regional theatres. The[...]had an
opportunity that has not existed
since in the U.S.

The writers found a wide open
market and presented su[...]ed questionable
and controversial. It was a very

From the enclosed safety of her car, to the
protective armour ofher professional status, and
to the desperate clutteredness of her apartment
— all of them signifying a retreat in the way she
uses them — she is drawn into the world of the
vulnerable by her contact with Buffy Koenig
(Kath[...]eatty) and with Dr Jim
Sandman (Michael Brandon), the chief
radiologist at the hospital where she works.

Her initial relinquishment of the sort of in-
volvement that will impinge upon her sense of
security is challenged by Buffy’s and Jim’s
separate dema[...]pt to pass Buffy’s
case to her male superior at the hospital is sub-
verted by Buffy’s trust in her, and her refusal of
anything but a professional relationship with
Jim is cast aside by his rejection of the terms of
contact she has laid down.

In a familiar irony, she finds that the work
she had thought would protect her from emo-
tional danger is, in fact, carrying the seeds of
that danger.

Inevitably, and unfortunately, discussion of
Promises In The Dark has concentrated on the
film’s closing moments, when Dr Kendall
switche[...]sha Mason) attends to Buffy (Kathleen Beller) who is connected
to a life-support system. Jerome Hellman’s Promises in the Dark.

keeping Buffy alive, an act which presents an
ethical dilemma, for while it is consistent with
Buffy’s request to her it contravenes the decision
of Buffy’s parents.

The film, thankfully, and strategically, avoids
centring on the debate, at least in any explicit
fashion, for any attempt to pursue such broad is-
sues would only be at the expense of the par-
ticular and personal terms of the drama it has
depicted.

Its closure at the point of this act, and its
presentation of it as a key moment in Dr Ken-
dall’s moral journey, in my view, ought to refer
one back to the film’s central narrative move-
ment. And that has to do with the processes of
her growth towards self—discovery, towards a
recognition of her human frailty, and an accep-
tance of it and the danger that it entails for her.

The film is directed by Jerome Hellman,
whose career as a producer spans 16 years: The
World Of Henry Orient (1964), A Fine Madness
(1966), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Day Of
The Locust (1975), Coming Home (1978) and
Promises In The Dark. It is a most impressive
debut as a director, to be admired for its
emotional restraint, for its richly detailed
characterizations, and for the splendid collection
of performances from its cast.

stimulating time and it developed a
lot of exciting young talent,
including people who are today in
the vanguard of the film industry
and theatre.

Things stayed that way until the
shift in emphasis from live drama
to tape and film. The economic
impact of television made itself felt,
and inevitably it became a more
commercial and restrictive
medium.

The pressure of having to go live to
air must have been demanding . . .

It was just like an opening night
in the theatre. The complexities of
staging a show — the three-camera
system, and the necessity of just
doing it once — created a
tremendous edge. There was a great
deal of the best kind of creative
tension involved, and you would
o[...]

everyone absolutely terrified.

What sort of rehearsal time were
you allowed on a program like
“Playhouse 90”?

The Playhouse 90s rehearsed for
almost two weeks, while a normal
one—hour show would rehearse for
the better part of a week. The
performance would then be aired
on the last day of rehearsal.

Are there any productions you
worked on which you recall with
particular pleasure?

During most of that time, I was
working as an agent and packager.
My function had much more to do
with putting the elements together,
selling them and observing the
process I am describing, than it did
with functioning creatively within
it. I guess the closest I came to that
was with The Kaiser Aluminum
Hour, where I participated as the
executive producer and worked on
a rotating basis[...]ook.

So, forgetting any judgments
about quality, The Kaiser
Aluminum Hour shows were the
ones I have the strongest feelings
about. They were really the start of
my producing career, as opposed to
my role as an[...]have produced six films since
1964, directing one of them. While
one might not ask this question of a
playwright or a novelist, why so few
projects?

I don’t know. It seems to be an
outgrowth of my process, in the
sense that I don’t have any
ambition of duplicating my past
experiences. My objectives, when I
got out of packaging and gave
up my business as an agent, were
very personal, and what motivated

l04—Cinema Papers, April-May

me more than anything else was the
desire to do things that on one level
or another reflected my sensibility.

The simple truth is that it has
taken me a very long time in each
cas[...]care
about, and which I can somehow
push through the system.

All these films deal, in one way or
anot[...]attempt to
come to terms with their own space
in the world. Has this been a
conscious design on your part?

I think it is an unconscious
design, in that I am governed by
what interests me the most and
what I feel most connected to
dramatically. Part of it may simply
be a result of my own conditioning.
I don’t have any background in
theatre, so my grasp and my
command of it is probably limited.
My progress as a producer, to an
extent, has been a direct result of
personal experience. I am drawn to
the things that, experientially, I feel
I can bring the most to.

You have worked with four
directors: Ge[...]Irving
Kershner, John Schlesinger and Hal
Ashby. What part did you play once
the productions were under way?

If you asked the directors
involved, they would probably say
each[...]s a very
good friend and client, and we had
years of work experience behind us
before we made The World of
Henry Orient. George trusted me,
and, as a result[...]access to his process.

I think a characteristic of all
those relationships was that there
was never[...]really had, and still have, a
tremendous respect for the creative

process and for people whose
talents I admire. And, from having
observed how directors work for so
many years, I was able to
collaborate without[...]role. I feel
reasonably safe in saying that each
of them would say, if asked, that

it was an unthrea[...]every level —— not in
a confrontational kind of
relationship, but in a mutually
supportive one.

I was able to remain very close to
the productions and, I think, had a
significant influence on every level:
working on the script, casting the
film, discussing the work in
progress, looking at dailies, and
working right through the cuts,
from first to last. Certainly, on the
last couple of films with
Schlesinger, I would say I had a
very intimate involvement.

Is the creative process a system of
osmosis, rather than you exercising
some sort of paternal control?

Absolutely. I think that is a very
legitimate form of collaboration,
and I welcome it with people I work
with. I don’t think the best results
are achieved by pounding tables
and[...]itics have claimed “Coming
Home” goes soft on the Vietnam
war and the opposition to it. What is
your reaction to that sort of
criticism?

It is hard criticism to deal with.
The reality is that we chose to make
a film about one specific aspect of
the war: namely, to deal with it in
terms of its effect on people. It was
a choice that was made at the
outset. We weren’t attempting an
Apocalypse Now or The Deer-
hunter: i.e., a great examination of
the events and the violence and so
on in direct terms.

The film was, in fact, an
outgrowth of Jane Fonda’s reaction
to her exposure at a spin[...]l-
chairs and who were complaining
bitterly about the conditions they
found in the U.S.: their feelings
were communicated to me when she
approached me about taking on the
film.

All of those involved in the film
felt that it was legitimate to try to
deal with that segment of the
experience, and to do it as honestly
as we were a[...]everything. So in those terms, I am
not stung by the criticism. I feel
there is room for a dozen films
about Vietnam, like one about the
impact of the war on the
Vietnamese people. I didn’t see any
of that in Apocalypse Now and I
certainly didn’t see it in The Deer-
hunter.

On a subject as large as Vietnam,
there is room for any number of
films which collectively will make
up a mosaic, and which will present
various perspectives on what the
reality of those events was.

In dramatic terms, are you happy
with the way things are resolved in
the film? I am speaking in particular
about the suicide of Bob (Bruce
Dern} . . .

I have reservations about the end
of the film, though not specifically
about Bob’s suicide. I think we had
structural problems with the last
third of the film and these began
with the confrontation between
Sally (Jane Fonda), Bob and[...]r quite solved, and that carries
right through to the final sequence,
where Bob commits suicide.

Objectively, that’s how I feel
about the film at this time. But it is
certainly a film that I love, and I
am really pro[...]it.

Why did you decide to direct
“Promises in the Dark”, rather than
produce it for someone else?

Buffy and her boyfriend. Promises in the Dark.

A conjunction of reasons, really.
By the time I did Coming Home, I
felt myself starting to fret at the
limitations of my involvement. It
was my fifth film, and, while it was
difficult and complicated in a lot of
ways, it wasn’t a new experience.

The problems, by and large, were
problems that were familiar; so
were the solutions. I didn’t feel
directly and personally challenged
in the same way I had by my earlier
work. I felt that whatever happened
in the future Ijust had to go out and
do it myself. So, that was the
beginning.

Was the idea brought to you, or did
you work on it from the beginning?

The original concept was brought
to me by Loring Mandel, a writer.
He is one of my oldest friends and
clients, and wrote several of The
Kaiser Aluminum shows. He had
the idea for some time and had got
a commission to do a draft of the
script. But when he had turned it in,
the people he was working with had
backed off, feelin[...]to me, as a
friend, asking me to evaluate it.

At the time I received it, I had
already decided that what I wanted
to do next was direct. I read
Loring’s script, which is markedly
different than the final film, though
the most important significant
elements were all ther[...]ark,
but it certainly engaged my
feelings.

Also, during this period, I had
had a direct personal experience
with the illness — my sister died of
cancer — and I didn’t feel I had had
the chance to work it out
completely, being in the midst of
making a film. I let Loring know
this and suggest[...]or, as well as a producer,
then I would take over the property
and go back to the planning board
and try to reconstruct the script.

Theconcept belongs to what might
be called a well-worn genre, going
back to[...]ry”. Did you feel you were
running a risk, with the box-office
and with the critics, by tackling this
subject again?

No. My[...]lways
getting it done. I was doing so
many things for the first time, and
pushing to get something made that
I myself would be responsible for.
It was a totally involving and
engaging experience, and I was
always occupied on the most
pragmatic level. My concerns were:
“My God, can I raise the money?”,
“Can I cast it in a way that I will[...]was a
terrifying experience and there was
no time for any second guessing.

I think there was also a se[...]stopped
to think about people actually
looking at the bloody thing, I might
have been overwhelmed. So, I
virtually put my head in the sand
and just went on about the job.

You must have seen a lot of films
that deal with the subject . . .

What I did was to assiduously
avoid seeing films that dealt with
the same subject matter. For my
source material I went to
documentary or educa[...]that had been made by
dying patients. They formed the
background and the support system
for the work. Some were very
beautiful.

One was made by the friends of a
young poet who was dying of
leukaemia, and it was beautifully
done and very m[...]ously gifted pianist. One
watched her through all the stages
of her illness, and through to her

death. It involved interviews with
the family and was a beautiful film.
I had my key cre[...]was about
a young doctor who was an
ecologist. In the course of his
research he had unwittingly
swallowed the chemicals that gave
him cancer of the oesophagus. So
he had to live with the reality of not
only having diagnosed his own
illness, but of having probably
given himself the disease. It was
incredible.

I also tried to expo[...]ew to research at hospitals
and cancer patients.

The media in Australia, even before
the film’s release, seems to be
identifying it as a controversial film,
simply because it raises the issue of
euthanasia. Do you see that issue as
a pivotal one for the film, or as just
one aspect of a broader drama, such
as the journey that is implied in the
opening sequence?

Both. I would like to address
myself first to the question of
euthanasia. It is a very broad term
and covers a lot of complex issues
that I wasn’t attempting to deal
with in the film. The obvious
questions about euthanasia are:
For what'.’, For whom?, Under what
circumstances? and By whose
direction? That really wasn’t what
the film was about. I was dealing
with a specific set of circumstances
through which I was trying to
examine the responsibility of a
doctor towards a patient.

This is in a clearly defined
medical situation, where the
doctor’s responsibility to the
patient’s wishes, and the patient’s
desire for independent choice and
autonomy, is in conflict with some
abstract medical code which more
and more in the U.S. prescribes
that people who are terminally ill,
even ifit is from old age, are denied
the opportunity to choose how they
die. They are push[...]tremendous cost and anguish,
whether or not that is what they
want. Now that’s what I was
focusing on, not the broad issue of
euthanasia.

On the other hand, I also wanted
to suggest that living and dying are
part of a continual experience. I
was trying to illustrat[...]ut off and

protected, had her feelings buried at
the outset, and that through this
experience or journ[...]living through this experience,
she had to let go of self-pity and
depression, and all those things
wh[...]ourselves.
We don’t appreciate how fantastic
it is to be alive and well, and to have
the opportunity to begin over again
repeatedly.

JEROME HELLMAN

So, I was trying to trace the two
kinds of journeys in a sense:
Alexandra’s movement from non-
involvement to a full and breath-
taking kind of life involvement, and
Buffy’s having to come to terms
with the fact that, like it or not, she
has to surrender l[...]ng good about herself.

Given that “Promises in the Dark”
belongs to a potentially “weepie”
genre, it is remarkable that you have
shunned what are best called “easy
tears”. Do you see this as a possible

reason for the commercial failure of
the film in the U.S.?

Yes. I am sure ofit. It is awfully
tough for me to be entirely
objective because when a film is
rejected, for whatever reason, it
hurts like crazy. But I have heard
from so many people who have seen
it, and who really admire and
respect the film, that they had to
drag themselves to see it. They just
didn’t want to look at it, and the
more they heard about it, and its
attempt to deal directly with the
subject matter and not sugar-coat
it, the less they felt inspired to run
out and line up in the street.

That last shot of Alexandra and the
expression on her face, when she has
switched off the life—support system,
and the fade to black are not only
stunning but uplifting . . .

I am glad you felt that. The
response of people who have seen
the film has been splendid, and has
somewhat counterb[...]t at it not being more
widely received. These are the risks
we take.

It has already been sold to tele-[...]ve a ready-made
audience coming up . . .

Yes and the CBS network felt
that the film would attract a
much broader audience than the
theatrical experience suggested.
They felt that at home, with its
sense of security and privacy, the
feelings the film generates might be
easier for people to deal with. There

is more of a history of that kind of

subject matter on television,
although it is not dealt with in quite
this way.

One can imagine it working in much
the same way as “Scenes from a
Marriage”, when it was in its
original six-part version for tele-
vision. People sat around after-
wards for hours and talked to each
other about it . . .

I[...]nderstand,
and while ideally I would like it
seen the way I conceived it — and it

Concluded o[...]

Japanese Cinema is comparable with the best of European and American filmmaking, both in the range and
significance of its films and the stature of its directors.

To investigate the film industry and culture at first-hand, director[...]A. Stocks recently visited Japan
(with assistance from the Australia Japan Foundation). Here is his report.

The first major response to Japanese film
began in the 1950s with Akira Kurosawa’s
Rashomon (1950), followed by a whole-hearted
acceptance of the work of Kurosawa, Kon
Ichikawa, and a lesser rash of exotica. Unfor-
tunately, interest in Japanese film tends to stop
there, neither looking back at the glories of the
19305, nor forward to the inheritors of that
“Golden Age”, to directors like Nagisa O[...]n outside Japan), Masahiro Shinoda and
others. It is rather like looking at a precious
stone without having any regard to the setting.

This article, therefore, will attempt t[...]han usual reliance on films
already well-known in the West.

The Beginning

Japanese cinema inherited many assets, and
quite a few limitations, from the culture from
which it sprang. The assets were a rich, dramatic
and theatrical tradition which made full use of
expansive styles and sets, and used dramatic ex-
position based on character development. The
novel was not a major force in 20th Century
Japan[...]nhindered by a
reliance on text and plot. Stories for the stage
were very firmly based on performance and
character.

Another asset was the print method of art
work distribution, developed to its highest
degree in the Edo period and which provided a
useful inspiration to film production. The
Japanese woodblock print was an art form in
multiple, which was produced for, and
patronized by, a public with highly-developed
standards. It showed its power in the depiction
of everyday life —— in its celebration of the forms
and patterns of a burgeoning urban society. So,
for the early filmmakers, it was natural for them
to take daily life as a subject. Historical stories,
expressed in the same effervescent collo-
quialisms, drawn from Kabuki theatre plots,
also adapted well to film.

Early inhibitions inherited from the theatre in-
cluded the resistance to female actors (early
films were made with ormagata —— female imper-
sonators) and the power of the benshi (the on-
stage narrator who explained every detail of the
plot and psychology of the Kabuki play). It was
quite some time before these limitations were
decisively overcome.

At the time social realism started to grow in
Japan, other, more sinister, forces were taking
hold on the society. Expansionist militarism, the

Opposite. and clockwise from top left: Akira Kurosawa’s

Rashomon. Shiro Toyoda’s Twilight Year, Kenji

Mizoguchi’s Life of Oharu, Yasujiro Ozu‘s Equinox Flower,

Mizoguchi‘s New Tales of the Taira Clan, Teinosuke
Kinugasa's Gate of Hell.

revival of the cult of bushido (“the way of the
warrior”) in a darker form, and an almost
hyste[...]ot superiority, to a disinterested West, all drew
the nation closer to war. Surprisingly, little of
this mentality permeated the cinema.

Even Japanese war documentaries have a
detached, almost lyri[...]ed by Japanese achievements in this
area. Only in the chambara (sword theatre) or
later samurai films do we see this cutting edge of
the Japanese psyche, the highly-developed mar-
tial arts and the extreme and almost unthinking
violence that is a product of conditioned
responses and dedicated training. And only in
the samurai film is the bushido ethic celebrated,
re-asserted as an integral part of Japanese man-

hood.

Forgotten History

Director[...]Naruse, Shiro Toyoda and
Heinosuke Gosho dominate the pre- and post-
war history of Japanese cinema, but only a few
representative films of these directors have been
screened for Western audiences. Interestingly,
some of these directors were still making films
as recent[...]hito (Twilight Year),
which he completed in 1977, is a funny and deep-
ly moving black comedy about an[...]lf rejected by his son, as his health
and control of his mind and bodily functions
start to run amok. Only the devotion of his
daughter-in-law saves him. Toyoda’s style is
sympathetic and coherent, with no sign of
hardening arteries.

Similarly, Teinosuke Kinugasa, a much more
uneven filmmaker. but director of Jigokumon
(Gate of Hell. 1953), the color film which
marked the entry of Japanese films into the
West, started work in 1917 as a female imper-
son[...]t more than 50 years
directing films.

Mizoguchi, the undisputed master of the
Japanese film, known with great affection as
“the woman’s director" as a tribute to his gift of
bringing believable women characters to the
screen and dispensing with onnagata, made his
debut in 1922. In 1952, four years before his
death, he made what many consider his finest
work, the profound Saikaku ichidai onna (Life of
Oharu), which traces the life of a 50 year-old
prostitute which began with an unhappy love
affaire.

The film forcefully exposes the subjugation of
women in Japan, while preserving the shreds of
human dignity left to Oharu — the right to
refuse her son’s offer of refuge. Precise and con-
sidered, the film moves with a dream—like reverie

which serves as a complete encapsulation of life,
which, after being lived, is only memories and
dreams.

Mizoguchi’s films, from the early Gion no
shimai (Sisters of the Gion, 1936) to the later
color epics Yokihi (Princess Yang Kwei Fei,
1955) and Shin heike monogatari (New Tales of
the Taira Clan, 1955), possess an epic sweep and
gran[...]eeping pans, with crowds moving on a
fixed arc to the camera, are a Mizoguchi
trademark which aptly catches his dynamic view
of human history and endeavour.

Certainly, as Noel Burch points out in his ex-
cellent book To the Distant Observer, the 1920s
and ’30s saw the growth in Japan of a truly ex-
ceptional national cinema, which, although it
absorbed and adapted influences of the West,
went far in its analysis of these forms.

The names of Ozu and Mizoguchi are well
known in Western film circles, and spoken of
with some reverence, but little is appreciated of
the other great masters: Naruse, Gosho, and
lshida. Many of their films have vanished, but
others are gradually being re-discovered.

inevitably, a study of Japanese cinema must
bring one closer to a re-evaluation of Western
filmmaking. In content alone, Japanese ci[...]on
personality and morality, and its fixation on the
problems of home and duty, obligation and
honor expose many weaknesses in the Western
film.

Until recently, few American films had
managed an insightful depiction ofthe h[...]t. Indeed, it was hardly considered a fit
subject for film. Instead, the American hero is
usually a rebel, out on his own against the world.
Even in the finer works of Italian and French
cinema, although penetrating observations are
often made, the concern is for the social context
rather than the bonds of family.

It is interesting to compare a recent American
film, Five Easy Pieces (1970), directed by Bob
Ra[...]sy Pieces, Robert Dupea (Jack
Nicholson) sets off for his family home with a
girlfriend, Rayette (Karen Black), from an un-
acceptable background. Robert comes from a
musical family and can play well, but has
rebel[...]ed career and drop-
ped out. Once Robert arrives, the film con-
centrates on the reactions of the family, which
seems to have no common goal, fello[...]gations — only a mysterious need
to be together for a short time. Acceptance is not
practised, nor is it encouraged. Arguments
break out, the girlfriend is humiliated, and
Robert adds to the chaos by sleeping with his
sister-in-law. Encounters are brief, inconclusive,
and the film ends arbitrarily.

How different is Ozu’s treatment of family
relationships in Equinox Flower. The film shows
a father’s efforts to control[...]

He then goes with his long-suffering wife to a
seaside resort, but even there peace is impos-
sible: graduating students hold a party until late
in the night, and the old couple cannot sleep.
Finally, his wife convinces him to make the lone-
ly train trip to see his daughter. There, he ac-
cepts the situation, and, as the film ends, the
father finds some solace singing old army songs
with his buddies.

The observation in the film is impeccable, the
pace slow and considered, and the story convinc-
ing. Added to this is Ozu’s particular style: an
absence of panning and zooming, a selectivity
that keeps the camera at all times below the eye-
level of the characters, and a fastidiousness in
the matter of reaction and response. The result is
the quality of great art. Against such commit-
ment and formaliz[...]tern films
seem overdramatized and chaotic.

Post-war Era I:
Impact on the West

Probably the most popular Japanese film-
maker, and the only one to gain complete accep-
tance in the West, is Akira Kurosawa, who
began his career in the 1940s, while the Pacific
War was in progress. Since then, his career ha[...]cupies a similar position internationally as that
of Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman. At best,
Kurosawa’s[...]amic, well wrought and
visually superb evocations of era and place; at
worst, they are mere spectacle, overblown and
pretentious. His early films are probably the
best, being more closely related to the truths of
Japanese culture.

Sanshiro sugata 1 (Judo Saga 1, 1943) is a
study of Sugata, a young martial arts student in
the Meiji era (that of the modernization of
Japan under the Emperor Meiji), who finds
himself attracted to the then new cult ofjudo,
which was beginning to offe[...]on to ju-
jitsu. Sugatajoins an older teacher who is under
attack, finds his own strength, but then ha[...]his arrogance and desire ofvictory.
Only through the love of a woman — the
daughter of one of the opposing ju-jitsu masters

whom he has to defeat in a fight — does
Sugata find his own piece of mind and, there-
fore. excellence in judo.

Zen c[...]‘Sugata
spends one night clinging to a pole in the
teacher’s garden pond to prove his dedication; he
is ‘enlightened’ by the opening of a lotus flower
in the morning.

Sugata —— like many of Kurosawa’s films — is
studio bound, and only the mastery of black and
white composition and texture saves it from
claustrophobia.

Two years later, Kurosawa made Tora no 0 0
fumo otokotachi (They Who Step on the Tiger’s
Tail, 1945), which reflects the restrictions of
wartime Japan. But, like all his films, it shows
the acceptance of failure as well as success, and
for this reason was quite popular after the war
when it was finally released by the American Oc-
cupation censors.

As with manyjidai-geki (period films), it has a
clear relevance to the state of society at the time
of production. In particular, it summons an
episode in Japanese history: that of the escape of
the Lord Yoshitune with his faithful servant
Benkei, the fabled warrior. Benkei leads
Yoshitune and his re[...]sed
as priests, as they try to escape patrols out for
Yoshitune’s blood.

Finally, to get through the last border outpost
to freedom, Yoshitune is disguised as a porter.
Even so, their deception is almost discovered,
and when Benkei sees that the commanding of-
ficer is about to unmask his lord, he grabs a stick
and beats Yoshitune. This is enough to allay
the suspicions of the soldiers, if not the com-
manding officer, and Yoshitune is allowed to
travel on.

This situation must have had many reverbera-
tions to the post-war scene in Japan, when the
Emperor. formerly deified as a living God. was
fo[...]inity. Whether this allegory was
ever accepted by the Japanese ofthat generation
is unknown, but the whole exercise was success-
ful. in that the Japanese emperor system of
government was allowed to continue. At least,
the Emperor was never tried as a war criminal,
as many Western leaders hoped.[...]established, and he continued with a
great number of films. Rashomon, with its im-
mense success overs[...]Japanese—ness’, firmly established him as one of
the country’s greatest talents. Yet, Rashomon is
far from being a typical Japanese film. As

A Japanese soldier becomes a Buddhist priest in Kori
lchikawa’s Harp of Burma.

Kurosawa’s later films increasingly showed, it
owes a vast debt to the Western, especially to
John Ford.

One is constantly aware in Kurosawa’s film of
the dynamics of composition and confrontation,
the Ford trademark of shooting through a
partially-obscured doorway or trees, frame-
within-a-frame compositions, the relative
shallowness of the characters and the clear
delineation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters.
Personal choice in a Kurosawa film is slight: the
individual has a duty, usually to fight, and after
the battle there is the same Fordian sense of
regret.

Kurosawa’s career can be seen to have
followed a parabola of rise, extreme success and
decline. The apex was Shichinin no samurai
(Seven Samurai, 1954), a film ofgreat strengths.
It was the most expensive film ever made in
Japan, a calculated tour de force. Later films,
like the obscure Dodeska De’n (1971) and the
lush but torpid Dersu Uzala (1975), show a senti-
mentality and lack of directorial edge that
verges on the distressing. Kurosawa is like the
boxer who has gone soft; his decline is tragic.

Below left: Akira Kurosawa’s fi[...]

/\ vastly different proposition is the work of
Kon Ichikawa, often regarded as a potential
peer[...].
Ichikawa’s films have a depth ofinsight which is
rare in cinema, whether from East or West. In
most of his films, he mastered that essential of
the true work of art: the interweaving and
suggestion of human frailty and indecision
before the survival; instinct takes over.

From his earliest days, Ichikawa tackled dif-
ficult subjects, like the endless pain and sadness
of Biruma no tategoto (Harp of Burma, 1956) to
the desperate, almost sub—human actions ofNobi
(Fires on the Plain, 1959). In a wonder of
perspective, and a mystery of mise en scene that
is not dependent on camera tricks or fast editing,
h[...]s breathe: they are ofthe outdoors, ofthe
nuances of rain and mist, sweat and decay. His
talent is highlighted in the neglected Yukinojo
henge (An Actor’s Revenge, 1[...]n his parents’
killers and avenge their deaths. The perfor-
mance, by noted matinee star Kazuo Hasegama,
is brilliant; he suggests the practised deceptions
of the omzagata as well as bringing home the
desire for blood, all the more shocking in its sup-
pression.

In a way, the triumph of An Actor’s Revenge is
that it is a film without a subtext; one is just
there as the drama continues. Opportunities pre-
sent themselves and are let go until the shocking
denouement, remarkable only because of the
perseverance of this half-man, half-woman.

In this mastery, Ichikawa’s films resemble the
best of Ozu’s work, reflecting the essential
Japanese tradition of mono no aware — of see-
ing the world for what it is, and living in that
world. Whereas Kurosawa uses this ideal for
what it is, Ichikawa pursues it through all the
tiny avenues of a character’s mind, exposing not
a slogan, but a spiritual fact.

Like the work of Ozu, Ichikawa’s camera re-
tains a discreet reserve, which is not formalistic
but rather like the stance offor example, he made the prodigious
Fires on the Plain, a bitter study of war and its
dehumanizing aspects, based on the novel by
Shoel Ooka; Kagi (The Key), a black comedy on
the declining sexual capabilities of an old man;

JAPANESE CINEMA

and two other films ofless enduring merit.‘ With
the decline of the feature film industry, he was
not averse to television and directed 26 episodes
of Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji, 1966).
lchikawa’s most recent film to gain release in
the West, Matatabi (The Wanderers, 1973), is a
valiant attempt to reconstruct traditional Japan
through the eyes of ‘youth’ characters.

Some would-be samurai travel through Japan
trying to make a living, but they lack the style
and the skill to carry it off. Along the way they
are joined by a half-idiot girl who trus[...]ut they are unable to support even
themselves and the girl is sold off as a prostitute.
The hero dies ingloriously when he falls and
breaks his skull.

Despite the attempts to relate this film to
modern Japanese youth (the hero is played by a
leading pop star), and despite the richness ofthe
visuals and its detailed characterization, The
Wanderers seems like an echo from a lost era, a
doomed initiative. Ichikawa said in an interview
“the,reason why there are so many jidai-gekz"
made is that the Japanese filmmakers seem
somewhat unable to grasp contemporary is-
sues”.

Ichikawa is still making films, but of a par-
ticularly Japanese mould and in a style not
calculated to win audiences in the West. I was
lucky to see him at work when I visited the Toho
Studio. What I saw was a tall, elderly but
healthy-looking man[...]cigarette between his teeth as his crew
prepared for another set-up. The technicians
worked with blinding speed, seemingly rehears-
ing, lighting and dressing the set at one time.
Finally, the shot, a complex dolly through a
doorway, was read[...]at
it. He made a few suggestions, watched through
the viewfinder as the actors did their lines, then
stood back. It was s[...]pproaching his work with calm
and decision.

Post-war Era II:
Social Criticism

One film to make[...]dan (Police and Small Gangsters).

rather because of, the length, this film drew large
audiences who watched with fascination the
evolution of the Japanese anti-war film.

The hero, Kaji (Tsyua Nakadai), finds himself
working[...]o do
something to alleviate their conditions, but is
drafted into the army. Finally, after the Soviet
declaration of war, the Japanese forces are
wiped out and the hero flees into the snow, still
seeking his lost wife.

Ningen no joken differs from the war films of
Ichikawa, say, in that Kaji is of a more
Western mould; he shows individualism and is
refreshingly free of the accepted mannerisms of
the stiffbow and the grim suppression of feeling.
Kaji is emotional, almost womanly in his con-
cerns. I-le cringes at the slightest violence, and
finds it hard to lash out at the many injustices he
sees. But we never really find what holds him
back, unless it is his own stunned incompre-
hension at what human behaviour becomes in
large groups under stress.

Various scenes stand out, such as those of the
kempei rat’ (the military police) terrorizing
soldiers or executing some laborers. This latter
scene shows the degradation of the bushido
ethic: an executioner prepares his sword for lop-
ping heads by wetting it (“so the fat doesn’t stick
to it”) and then hands it over to the local
policeman who makes a mess of it. The scene
has a picnic quality, yet exposes a very seamy
side of the Japanese character.

Kobayashi takes a big risk in exposing his
country’s war crimes so definitively, especially
since this honesty has rarely been seen elsewhere
in the West. The film which closely approaches
Ningen no joken in its expose of passions in war
is Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers, an Italian
epic ofthe Algerian war ofindependence. Ifone
looks to American films for depiction of war
crimes, one can only think of Little Big Man,
which shows brutalities against Indians in
historical period. Of course, this violence also
relates to the Vietnam war, expressing in code
the shock to the American psyche dealt by the
My Lai massacres. But Ningen nojoken is not in
code, and it clearly states the various Japanese
attitudes to a bitter war.

Kaji is not a coward, as it turns out, and in the
final battle with Soviet tanks, he and his men
fight with great bravery. Later, there is a
wonderful scene when Kaji goes through a

Below: Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) in a scene from the third
episode of Masaki Kobayashi’s Ningen no joken (The
Human Condition).

miniature war crimes trial as he tries to defend
himself before the Soviet commission. But he is
betrayed by a turncoat interpreter and Kaji, who
has spent most of his time anticipating and dis-
cussing a socialist victory, is made out to be a
war criminal.

Ningen no joken does have its flaws — there is
a certain staginess about the production, maybe
due to economies in production, maybe just an
aspect of Kobayashi’s style — but, in the grasp
of its narrative and the honesty of its statement,
it surpasses most other war films.

Kobayashi has made many films, a few of
which have made their way to the West. Kaidan
(Kwaidan, 1964), a series of ghost stories based
on the stories of Lafcadio Hearn, used color, the
widescreen format and a most unusual
soundtrack to evoke the recesses of superstition
and fearful acceptance ofthe supernatural that is
integral to Japanese traditional life.

Two other[...]llion, 1967)
and Seppuku (Harakiri, 1962), expose the
mainstay of Japanese feudalism: the cult of
obedience to superiors, and the nobility of self-
inflicted death. Kobayashi is a true radical in
style and content, and his films merit close atten-
tion.

Post-war Era III: New Wave

As in many initiatives, the Japanese are not
averse to picking up overseas tr[...]y had new wave films in production,
most notably early Oshima films. Oshima is a
study in himself, and has been covered widely as
a result of sensational films like L’empire des
sens (Empire of the Senses, 1976), but he has a
long history as a fi[...]is dynamic
political concerns have always been to the
forefront. Only recently has some of his more
moody, considered work become available in
Australia.

Most significant is Natsu no imoto (Dear
Summer Sister, 1972), which was brought to
Australia by the Australia Japan Foundation in
1978 and has had a limited number of screen-
ings in 35mm version. On the surface a direct,
roughly-made low—budget film, it is, in fact, a
strongly unified work which stands to be ranked
as one of the great films of the ’70s.

The film deals with the question of the status
of Okinawa, long a Japanese possession,
alienated after bitter battles with the Americans

in the closing stages of the Pacific War, and
returned to Japan in 1972. In fact, Okinawa was
the only part ofthe Japanese homeland that was
ever invaded, and the suicidal battles there, with
companies fighting to the last man and Japanese
civilians committing suicide en masse. by jump-
ing off the cliffs into the sea, earned it a special
ice in Japanese history.

The exploration of this subject, which brings

) the differences in cultural tradition between
* ie two areas (Okinawa is a matriarchy, Japan
Il\. iinally a patriarchy), is explored through the
story of Sunaoko, a young Japanese girl who
travels with h[...]r lost half-brother. She meets him within
minutes of arriving (he works as a tourist
spruiker at the airport, offering lessons in
Okinawan) but does n[...]e, such as
Sakurada, an ex-soldier who travels to the island
to relive the violence and excitement of the war,
and who also hopes for a meeting with the man
who will kill him.

Through a masterly use of the landscape of
the island, Oshima weaves a story that is a
political drama in the broadest sense, even down
to his specific refere[...]ese history and
its expression through character. The deliberate
use of harsh lighting, the murkiness and
graininess of the 16mm original add to, rather
than detract from, the film’s message.

Another filmmaker who has fought for
national concerns as a fit subject for film is
Shohei Imamura, who is in many ways Oshi-
ma’s alter ego. lmamura’s first film to gain
attention in the West was Jinruigaku nuumon
(The Pornographer, 1966), a bitter—sweet study
of some men who make 8mm porn films for a
living. Shot in black and white, it broke with
many of the formal elements of Japanese film,
taking a much more meandering storyline and
expressing the growing self-awareness of
Japanese youth.

lmamura’s work has been steady and prolific
up to the mid-1970s, but his master work, which
has been almost unseen in the West, except for
short seasons in Germany, is Kuragejima (Tales
from a Southern Island, 1968). This massive,
often turgid but visually and emotionally
riveting film is Imamura’s high point as a direc-
tor.

Kuragejima is ostensibly a study of mythical

Below: A porno filmmaker in Shohei Imamura‘s The Porno-
grapher.

Nagisa Oshima’s Dear Summer Sister, which explores the
differing cultural traditions of Okinawa and Japan.

society, with a kinship syste[...]embracing madness,
shamanism and unusual rituals. The reality is
tenuously applied by the arrival of a ‘New
Japanese’, Kanya, a water engineer concerned
with development of the island. But in his con-
tact with the islanders and their primitive culture
he quickly[...]a near-animal state.

Imamura, although his film is set in the
southern islands, makes a subtle allegorical
poin[...]dition creates a society dependent
on ritual that is the enemy of culture and reason.
Not that Imamura says that these new imports
are good; in fact, the whole film has a wistful
quality as the island is dragged towards
“progress”. Rather, in the best tradition of
mono no aware, Imamura states the problem
and the outcome in broad and dramatic terms,
and the whole process advances regardless.

Kuragejima is a massive film, in scope and
production, but was not a financial success, and
it is hardly surprising that the Nikkatsu studio
(see box) was forced out of such art film produc-
tion within a couple of years. Imamura has
retired from active feature production, and now
runs a private film school in Yokohama. His
other work includes a number of documentaries
for television, dealing with the search for lost
soldiers in the Pacific.

Lastly, in what appears to be the enduring
films of the Japanese New Wave, is the extra-
ordinary work of Masahiro Shinoda, a young
director who made his debut in 1960 with youth
films for Shochiku. An arts graduate, his
brilliant exploration offilm is best seen in Shinju
ten no amijima (Double Suicide, 1969), a film
version of the classic Bunraku play, Double
Suicides at Amajima. Instead of merely
dramatizing the play and translating it into film
terms, Shinoda has exploited the character of
film and play, integrating elements of theatre
and graphic design to create an experience of
great wonder.

When watching Kabuki theatre the Wes-
terner is often initially disconcerted byseeing
the kuroko (state assistants dressed in black)
appear during the action to help an actor with a
change of costume on stage, or hand him an es-
sential prop. Eventually, in the convention of
Japanese theatre, these kuroko remain invisible.
But in the film version of the play, Shinoda has
retained the kuroko, so that at crucial moments
the action is helped along, even created by, these

hooded figures, anonymous but menacing. Once
again, the incorporation oftraditional forms in a
new context makes a powerful statement on the
mores of Japanese culture.

The plot of Double Suicide deals with the
penalties of going against the social codes. Jihei,
a paper merchant, falls in love with the geisha
Koharu, but as his business suffers he is unable
to buy her out. His brother tries to break the
relationship by disguising himself as a lover of
Koharu’s, and they even get Jihei to sign an oa[...]but, finally, Jihei’s wife
reveals that Koharu is not unfaithful to him, and
insists that Jihei sel[...]to free Koharu and therefore
save his honor. But the wife’s father arrives and
drags her home.

Then, through a series of tricks, each
humiliating to Jihei, the two lovers escape and
cross a series of bridges, each step taking them
closer to suicide. Helped by the hooded kuroko,
Jihei stabs Koharu and then hangs himself.
Their downfall is inevitable, the final confronta-
tion with a sealed society from which escape was
not possible.

The art direction succeeds brilliantly in
‘modernizing’ the settings, using huge blow-ups
of prints and designs, so that it is clear from the
beginning that the world they occupy is a mental
not physical one. Shinoda’s mastery of the pic-
torial elements, and his always precise angl[...]rey, 1977), a
more recent film by Shinoda entered for the
1978 Asian Film Festival, takes a more conven-
tional approach to its story. But it is still excep-
tional for its clear progression and nuance of
character. It tells of a blind woman singer who
makes her living by playing in villages
throughout pre-western Japan. Notable in the
film is a very highly developed sense ofplace and
a fine eye for human emotion.

Sadly, the Japanese New Wave is in decline.
Imamura has made only one film since the early
1970s; Shinoda is still directing, but on a
reduced scale; and Oshimais reliant principally
on European money for his productions.’ Like
cinema in most countries, the economics of
production can no longer be covered after the
cost of distribution is deducted from ever
diminishing returns. _

Total film admission[...]re
1,098,882,000 — i.e., 10 admissions per head of
population — but had already dropped a drastic

20 per cent by 1961. The decline has been steady
and irreversible as other pursuits drain the
leisure spending of the population. And, as
Japan has a figure of 228 television sets per 1000
people, the future continues to look bleak.
Unfortunately, as the audience shrinks, so
does the number of discriminating cinemagoers,
to a point where they can no longer be serviced.
S0, apart from a few local efforts at large-scale
production, it is the international blockbusters
which score the market, and local productions

and yakuxa films (gangster films) are left to pick
up the left-overs. These are, sadly, just as disap-
poin[...]reign counterparts. Still, they
do offer a chance for young actors and directors
to enter the industry, and theof—$80,000 and up, have shown some
promise and justify the exercise by their release
on to the growing video-cassette market. They

Concluded on p. 153

Company Structure

As in most Japanese business, the film production industry is dominated by a few larger
companies, film zaibatsu, with a large,gap down to the smaller independent production
groups. In comparison with the U.S., however, there is one significant difference: there is no
anti—trust legislation in Japan, so every element of production is contained under one umbrella
—- from the labs to the cinemas, from the talent agencies to the ticket printing machines.

Toho, for example, the largest company in Japanese films, operates 234 theatres throughout
the country. In one area in Tokyo, Yurakcho, just across from the Imperial Palace, Toho
operates 10 top-class film[...]stage theatres. It has a vast studio complex out of
town, with many sound stages, its own labs and so[...]tennis courts, dance halls and sauna baths.

This is the company responsible for most of Kurosawa’s output, for many of the films of
Ozu, Naruse, Mizoguchi, and others. Other major Japanese companies include Faei (from
1941), Nikkatsu (since 1912; the oldest film company in Japan), Shochiku (1920), w[...]on a particular style, aimed at a certain section of the vast
cinema-going audiences of the ’50s and the ’60s. For example, Nikkatsu specialized in dramas
of lower-class life, Shochiku favored an ‘American’ style, with a slightly left bias, Toho the
jidai-geki (period film) and serious drama, but even this recipe did not spare some from dis-
aster. Toho was crippled by labor strikes just after World War 2, and took a long time to
recover. A breakaway studio, Shin Toho (New Toho), produced one of Ichikawa’s early films.
Nikkatsu got into serious financial trouble in the late ’60s and had to cease production, and has[...]y got back into limited production with its range of ‘romantic pornography’ films
— fairly mild[...]ay settings.

A visit to Toho Studios reminded me of one of the large British studios like Pinewood. A
large, spr[...]side aircraft hangar-type structures. Outside
was the debris of past productions: large props, disassembled sets and just plain garbage. It
was raining, and the whole place was quiet, but work was going on in the large and drafty
sound building, and over on a ba[...]was directing a specialized local film.

I found the studio less detailed than a British one, the security quite lax and the stages not
quite soundproof. However, production seemed faster and the crews worked far more co-
operatively than on British sets.

Elsewhere the stages were dark, used for storing goods or unwanted props. A cold wind
swept across the damp studio lots, the huge special effects tank was empty and paint peeled off
the matte projection wall behind it.

In the editing department, Kurosawa’s room was just as he had left it, with the simple tools
that he used to cut his great films:[...]ils to hang film on, a bullseye
viewer and a pair of scissors. It was hard to believe that such monume[...]ans. But nearly 30 years have passed, and so have the great
days of cinema.

Cinema Papers, April-May—-1 ll

Whose initiative was it to rectify the
situation?

Bill Nielsen, who was the Labor
Premier at the time, had sent a
team across to have a look at the
South Australian Film Corporation
in 1975. He was sufficiently
impressed that there were other
ways of doing things within a
bureaucratic structure, and got Gil
Brealey, the founder director-
chairman of the SAFC, to do a
report into the department of film
production. The Government acted
very quickly on this report and the
Tasmanian Film Corporation was
established on September 5, 1977.

What was your first priority as
director of the TFC?

To ensure that my creative staff
were not employed as public
servants. That was the major battle
we fought and won. If we had not
had the right to hire and fire, then it
might as well hav[...]u think public servant
requirements have hindered the
other state government film bodies?

Absolutely. You can see it in the
Peat Marwick and Mitchell report
on the Australian Film Com-
mission, which recommended
the AFC move away from the
public service structure. This is one
ofthe things holding Film Australia
back. It is dragging the ABC down,
and has had a harmful effect on the
whole of Australia — in

government life and not only on the

film industry.

I l2—Cinema Papers, April-May

alcolm
Smith

Malcolm Smith, director of
the Tasmanian Film
Corporation, talks to Peter
Beilby and Scott Murray
about the TFC’s
establishment, and the role
it is playing in film
production in the state.

Why is it so harmful?

If you have a job and are totally
secure in it, there is no reason for
you to work harder or faster; there

is no need to continually prove
yourself. In the time I have worked
within government services, I have
met a lot of hard-working people.
But, in general, there is no
incentive. The structure has a
cushioning and deadening effect.[...]ions over
salaries: i.e., that they cannot
employ the best person because of
salary restrictions . . .

I believe that has been the case
with the Victorian Film Corpora-
tion, and I understand they are
trying to change it.

Apart from staff levels, what
problems did you have in getting the
TFC off the ground?

We have always been in a
different situation to that of the
other corporations, in that we are
not a merchant bank. Each year we
have a guarantee of income to
make government films, but we
receive n[...]to borrow money to buy

equipment or to invest in the high
risk ventures of feature films,
children‘s television series, or[...]n 1979/80, we borrowed $1
million: $300,000 worth of that has
come from loan funds. The other
$700,000 has come from traditional
sources such as banks. So, we have

t[...]That makes us

look at our money very carefully.
The TFC has always tried to be
profit-oriented. We have large
overheads and have always said
that it is going to be a long time
before the TFC starts making
profits. In fact, the only way at
present that we can see ourselves
making a profit is if we hit the
jackpot with feature films.

Apart from staff, what were your
other priorities?

My prime concern was to get the
place running as an exciting film
production hous[...]ake those films. My second
objective was to boost the TFC’s
facilities. It had been in terrible
premises for years, which had a
very bad effect on morale and[...]editing rooms, a
sound stage, a video centre, two
viewing theatres, a sound mixing
suite, photographic darkrooms and
a portrait studio.

To what extent were you bound to
employ local people?

My[...]possible. But I have also recognized
that not all the skills are available
in Tasmania. In those cases[...]o sent our
people interstate to gain experience.

What skills was Tasmania lacking?

As far as the old Film
Department goes, scriptwriting,
producing and sound. The only area
that we were really strong in was
camerawork. All the other areas
needed upgrading.

Was there much filmmaking activity
in Tasmania besides that generated
by the Department of Film
Production?

Very little apart from the ABC
and the two commercial television
stations. Alistair Math[...]a Hobart
production company, made
commercials and the occasional
documentary.

Tasmania is a very small market,
with only 400,000 people. Apart
from the television stations, who
also make their own commercials,
using television crews, we were the
only game in town. What has since
happened is that several camera-
men and producers have left the
TFC and set up their own
businesses, making docum[...]commercials, or acting as free-
lance cameramen. What we are
starting to see is the emergence of
peripheral supports for an industry.
Someone last month, for example,
set up the first casting agency in
Tasmania.

Did you plan on this sort of
expansion?

As the TFC is not given a set budget
a year, how does it finance a film for
a government department?

In Tasmania, as in South Aus-
tralia, there is central funding.
Each year, the state government,
through the Premier’s Department,
sets aside an amount for film and
still photographic film (this year it
is $686,000). In January every year,
the government departments are
asked what films they want made
during that year. Then, once the 50
or whatever requests for films have
come in, a government film
committee d[...]have films made
in a priority order. Then we make
the films until the money runs out.

Apart from state government
departments, there are the
government instrumentalities, like
the Hydro Electric Commission.
These bodies, which receive funds
outside of the Treasury, are com-
pelled under the Act to come to
the TFC to have their films made,
or their still photographs taken. But
they have to fund these projects out
of their budgets.

Do you get any money from the
state government to pay for rent or
wages?

No. We don’t get any subsidy to
cover those things.

Which makes the TFC different
from the other corporations . . .

Yes. The only thing we received
was a grant of $58,000 to cover our
first year’s deficit. That[...]t receive any
establishment grants, which was
one of the things recommended in
the Brealey Report.

The TF C has also made documen-
taries for commercial companies in

Tasmania and interstate.[...]derately, but I hope

increasingly so. When I did the
same sort of thing in South Aus-
tralia, I found it took three years
for the SAFC to draw in major

sponsors like General Motors-
Holden and Mayne Nickless.

I am following the same pattern
here and going to companies saying
t[...]arketing organization and can
distribute films to the markets they
want to reach.

Why should a state film corporation
want to move into the public sector
and compete with private production[...]entary films. If we can
educate them to recognize the value
of documentary films, then we are
helping the industry, because we are
bringing in more money a[...]g new sponsors. And,
say, if I get a film to make for
Uncle Ben’s Pet Care, that means a
lot oflocal freelance technicians are
employed. From an overall Aus-
tralian standpoint, we are widening
our market.

Do you budget these sort of films as
an independent production company
would?

Yes, we have total costing. We
budget for wages, equipment, raw
stock. overhead and profit.

Is there any difference in the way
you would estimate costs for a
documentary to be produced for a
government department and one for
a commercial company?

Yes, we apply a larger overhead
cost to government films. The
philosophy behind that is that the
Government has asked the TFC to
be here, to retain a certain number
of staff and to maintain certain
facilities. We cons[...]efore, that they bear a
greater overhead charge.

Is there sufficient profit in
documentaries to make[...]ion?

We will always be struggling.
Our main hope is feature films. We
are not going to move into a viable
situation for quite some time, given
our position in the state, its size and
all the problems entailed with that.
But we are trying to be profit-
orientated in all we do. The one

MALCOLM SMITH

positive factor is that the money we
earn IS recyclable; it doesn’t go
back to the Treasury.

The TFC set up a special marketing
office in Sydney to handle your
documentaries; how successful has
that been?

Very. I have always felt that the
marketing and selling of short films
in Australia is a neglected area.
Feature films are the glamour area
and the one that takes up a lot of
energy. Short films always fall into
the shadow.

We felt it was important that the
marketing office be established in
Sydney, because it is one of the
centres of filmmaking and there are
a lot of major clients there.

The marketing office enables the
films we make. and the others we
handle, to be aggressively sold. We
are acting as the exclusive agent for
the New South Wales Film
Corporation, the Victorian Film
Corporation, the Perth Institute of
Film and Television, the Australia
Council and several independent
film producers, like Paul Winkler.
The office also feeds back
information to me as to what films
need to be made.

You also represent the films of Film
Australia . . .

Yes, but not exclusively. We
handle only some of their product.

Apparently, the TFC has funded
films made outside Tasmania, such
as “Frontline" . . .

When I saw the film. which stars
an ex—Tasmanian cameraman. I felt
it was one of the best Vietnam war
films ever made. So the TFC gave
Dave Bradbury a loan to help him
meet certain shortages. Basically.
we will look at anything if it is
presented as an exciting and viable
proposition.

One of the stated aims of the SAFC
was to make itself redundant within

five to 10 years. Is that something
you hope to do with the TFC?

I would like to see the TFC self-
destruct in 10 or 15 years, and the
emergence of a private industry
based in Tasmania. In p[...]

terms, however, it is likely that the
TFC will need to be around much
longer, even if it is acting solely in
the role of a catalyst, securing
moneys and investments, and[...]ry films made.

I would like to move more
towards the South Australian
situation of being able to put work
out to the local industry. But we
have had different problem[...]n
being our own production house
and we will need the support of the
government for quite some time.

Over the past two years, we have
made a major investment i[...]and Philips VDKI4
cameras.

We are producing some of our
sponsored documentaries on tape,
as well as t[...]ope to concentrate on building a
varied selection of soft-ware
material for the home video disc
revolution which I see on the
horizon. We believe that the book
publishing business, as such, will be
moving into the video film area,
and people will be taking discs and
such programs into their homes.

The reason we are exploring in
this area is that we believe a state
like Tasmania should conc[...]s own peculiar problems,
and, in Tasmania, we see the need
to work in the area of children’s
television, for which there is a great
demand in Australia.

We are trying to interest the
television networks in a children’s
series (Fatty and George), for
which we have already made a
pilot.

The Australian industry tends to
focus on the feature films, which is
the high risk area, whereas we see a
future for ourselves as producers of
television programs, which is a
much safer market once you find
the product and can interest the
television stations in it. Also, once
you get a series going, you can
provide a continuity of work for
crews and actors. A feature is a
one-off affair, and the crew
disperses afterthe TFC's Slippery Slide. Top right:
Anna Ralph as Jo[...]s Manganinnie in Manganinnie.
Bottom right: scene from Fatty and George.

more than one feature film a year,
two at most, and that the other
areas should be the more stable
growth areas.

Why do you think Tasmania can
service the needs for children’s
programs? Is that an area in which
you have special expertise?

We don’t have special expertise
but our pilot for Fatty and George
is regarded by the Australian
Broadcasting Tribunal’s children’s
committee as the best local
children’s program they have seen.
We entrepreneured the idea, wrote
the script, produced it and hope to
go into production in early 1980.

What other children’s areas are you
looking into?

We have just completed another
pilot for children’s television based
on puppets called The Joe Blake
Show.

I think Tasmania can develop the
puppet and animation areas,
although they need sp[...]would suit a studio-based, cottage
industry type of production.

Is that why you are dealing with
animator Yoram Gross?

Those were our reasons for
dealing with Yoram Gross when the
TFC was set up. Recently,
however, we bought an option on a
property developed by Yoram
called Save the Lady, but I did that
because I thought it was one of the
best family feature scripts I had
read in the past two years.

Yoram Gross was actually the
first producer I approached over
Manganinnie, because it looked as
though the elements lent themselves
to an animated film. It is quite
interesting that Manganinnie has
turned out[...]initiated
because I was very excited when I
read the unpublished manuscript by
Beth Roberts; it seemed to have the
makings of a wonderful film. I
believe, as the old Hollywood
tradition has it, that filmmaking is
about gut feelings: i.e., hoping that
whatever pleases you will also
please an audience.

When I showed the idea to the
TFC board and a diverse group of
people, everyone felt the same

emotional strength in the property.
That gave me the enthusiasm to
push on and develop it.

What type of film did you see it as
during those early stages?

I have always seen it as an
exciting and positive film about the
dignity of human relationships —
very much the Storm Boy market. I
have always hoped that the film
would have the quality and values
of Dersu Uzala.

How did you find the manuscript?

The author came to us. The Aus-
tralia Council had given her a
grant to develop the manuscript
into a screenplay, and she had hired
Ted Ogden to do it. As so much of
the book is about the Aboriginal,
Manganinnie, Ted decided to tell the
story from many viewpoints — the
bushranger’s, the soldiers’, that of
the family involved — and only
now and again did the Aboriginal
woman appear. But it seemed to me
that the only way one could get the

strength of that story across was to
tell it from the viewpoint ofthe two
leads, Manganinnie and Jo To. So
we went back to the original and
developed it from there.

Initially. But the big risks were
whether we would find the right
Aboriginal and the right girl, and
whether there would be enough plot
to hold the film together. All I can
say after seeing three-quarters of
the rushes is that I am convinced we
have a classical film whic[...]e audiences.

Were these [problems an obstacle in
the fund-raising?

I always felt it would be hard to
raise finance for Manganinnie
because it could not easily be
identified as a commercial project.
It would be like the SAFC going
out to sell Storm Boy. They had
many knock-backs, but they
believed in the film, and eventually
it was made and turned into an
enormous success.

Where we were very lucky was
that the first person we took Mang-
aninnie to was David Williams of
Greater Union. We had already
been dealing with the AFC, and it
was very much behind the project.

Above: Manganinnie. Below: the new TFC headquarters in Hobart. Bottom left:
the sound studio (45m x 14.5m).

But Williams was imm[...]nvestment. I
then found it relatively easy to get
the local television stations,
Channel 6 and Channel[...]leverage or
anything, because people believed
in the product. It was a question of
the property selling itself.

How did the project develop?

I gave the project to John Honey,
who is a staff producer, to see
through and develop. We also
employed Ken Keslo, who was in
his third year at the Australian
Film and Television School, to
write the property. Gil Brealey was
also involved in the original writing
with Ken and John.

Was Honey always going to direct?

No; we hoped he would be the
producer. But John proved himself
to be such a fine director on the
short films he made for us, that we
decided to go with him. That’s
when we brought in Gilda Baracchi
as producer.

We knew of the reputation she
had during her two years in the
U.S., and also considered her to be
intelligent and sympathetic.

Did you have any reaction from the
investors over using so many first
time out peopl[...], we originally
wanted a Tasmanian cameraman,
but the investors insisted that we
get more people with feature
experience. That’s why Brealey is
acting as an executive producer and
why Garry Hansen is director of
photography.

“Manganinnie" has a low budget
for a film primarily shot on location.
Has it been co[...]cial venture. We
had certain overheads counted in
for the TFC, but that is normal
commercial practice. When you
have investors. your budget has to
be absolutely kosher. It is a tight

budget, but it has proved to be a
fairly spot-on one.

Your above-the-line costs are prob-
ably a lot lower than they w[...]an international
name to play Anna’s father, in the
hope it would get us a sale in the
US. The role would take a week to
shoot, so we allowed $50,000. We
were looking at Alan Bates, and
that type of person, but we found
we couldn’t afford him. And the
sort of names we were getting for
$50,000, I haven’t even heard of.

So, we decided to go with an
Australian. This meant we didn’t
have to pay all the equity loading
and so on. As it is, we are delighted
with Philip Hinton.

The title has undergone a few
changes. Is there a reservation
about the commercial appeal of
“Manganinnie” as a title?

The investors had reservations on
whether Manganinnie would be a
strong marketing name outside
Tasmania.What does it mean? Can
people spell it? For that reason, we
looked for a name that would
describe the film better and draw in
the male-adult audience. The title
we came up with was Darkening
Flame. But it was not well received
and the investors made the decision
to go back to Manganinnie. It could
be t[...]t work
outside Australia, and we may have
to look for a name change.

When will you have a release print?

In April or May; we are looking
for a release in July.

Are you taking the film to the
Cannes Film Festival?

We don’t know, but we are
certainly not going to rush the film
for Cannes. We will get it ready
when it best suits the film.
However, we could do what Tony
Ginnane has done and take a 20-
minute show reel there.

What other features does the TFC
have in preparation?

There is Gland Time, which is a
comedy set in a meatworks. I see it
as a sort of sympathetic comedy of

Concluded on p. 153

Cinema Papers. April[...]

UNITED STATES

It seems Hollywood and scores of
cities elsewhere in the U.S. know no
bounds when it comes to snowballing
film productions. As of mid-March, 42
features were shooting in the U.S. and
another 13 U.S.-financed films were on
foreign locations. Estimated value of the
55 features is in excess of $230 million.
(A year ago the figures were 30 films
worth around $98 million.)

Obviously, an increase in tele-features
is not the big threat to cinema product it
was five to 10 ye[...]e into pro-
duction since January 1. Last year in the
same period 24 tele-features were under
way.

Leading the uptempo is the wor|d’s
biggest and busiest producer, Ray Stark,
who has 10 major films worth $90 million
for 1980 release ($60 million will be spent
on advert[...]ing
developed, five television pilots to shoot
in the next four months and five tele-
features for shooting between now and
September.

Stark‘s first 1980 release, The Electric
Horseman (Robert Redford, Jane Fonda,
di[...]Pollack), has grossed
$23 million in 983 theatres during its first
three weeks. Yet to premiere are Neil
S[...]Robert Moore), To Elvis with Love (Gus
Trikonis), The Hunter (Buzz Kulik),
Smokey and the Bandit 10-4 (Hal Need-
ham), Somewhere in Time (Jeannot
Szwarc). The Perfect Circle (Claudia
Weill), Neil Simon’s Seems Like Old
Times (Jay Sandrich), The Competition
(Joel Oliansky) and wrong is Right
(Richard Brooks).

Randal Kleiser (who recently directed
the remake of Blue Lagoon in Fiji with an
Australian crew and Richard Franklin as
executive producer), will direct the
screen version of Annie for Stark. Buzz
Kulik has been signed for Fast Freddie
and His Brother John and Long Gone;
Frank Pierson (A Star is Born) will do
Desperado; Harry Hurwitz, Larceny, lnc.;
Martin Ritt, Men of Bronze; Jean Claude
Tramont, Colette.

Martin Scorsese is still editing Raging
Bull (starring Robert de Nir[...]e in October. It was to have had a
massive across-the-nation release in
early May.

Colin Higgins (Foul Play) has Jane
Fonda an[...]ne to Five,
which he also co-wrote; Blake Edwards is
shooting 5.0.3. with wife Julie Andrews
and William Holden; Stanley Kramer has
set April 28 as the start-date for the $16
million The Survivor (scripted by Abby
Mann); Hal Ashby teams with Jon Voight
again (after Coming Home) in Looking to
Get Out; Ken. Shapiro is directing
Modern Problems; Buck Henry, First
Family; Eric Karson, The Octagon
(formerly cry Vengeance).

Bob Clark (earning exceptional acco-
lades for his direction of Murder by
Decree) has finally started Tribute (U.S.
financed) with Jack Lemmon and Lee
Remick after Canadian unions tried to
stop Remick getting a work permit.
George Edwards (The Attic) is producer-
director of Camp Delinquent; James B.
Harris, Fast walking for Lorimar; John G.
Alvidsen (Rocky, Save the Tiger), The
Formula (Marlon Brando); 33")’ Brown.
The Fire Sermon.

ll6—Cinema Papers, April-May

l1P.HIDDF.Ilt!Mfl1flSW{illlU5lIl(DORfIX(P‘fl

Poster for Robert Greenwald’s Xanadu,
starring Olivia Newton—John and Gene Kelly.

Cancellations include producer David
Begleman’s Olympiad (because of the
Russian invasion of Afghanistan and pro-
jected U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olym-
pics), and the third shark epic Jaws 3,
People 0 (producer Richa[...]scriptwriter Carl Gottlieb debuts
as director on The Caveman, starring
Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach. Out of the
water, that lovable mutt Benji is into his
third film, Oh Heavenly Dog, with Chevy
Chase and Omar Sharif also starring for
producer-director Joe Camp.

Robert Benton (Kramer Vs Kramer) is
preparing Stab for MGM; Robert Red-
ford is into final post-production on Or-
dinary People,[...]director
(Donald Sutherland stars); Clive Donner,
The Curse of The Dragon Queen; Frank-
lin Schaffner is still in Budapest on The
Sphinx; Martin Davidson's Captain
Avenger has been re-titled Hero at
Large.

Sidney Lumet is preparing the screen
version of the Broadway hit Deathtrap;
Peter Yates (Breaking Away) is readying
Janitor for Twentieth Century-Fox;
Richard Jeffries, Red Tide[...]or, and Michael Pate’s initial choice to
direct The Mango Tree, is preparing
Kingfisher for Brut Prods.

Other directorial assignments: Gary[...]Chong’s Next Movie; Allan
Moyle, Times Square (for Robert Stig-
wood); James Toback, Love and Money;[...]s; Robert
Clouse, Battlecreek Brawl; John Landis,
The Blues Brothers; Richard Lang, A
Change of Seasons; William Sachs,
Galaxina; David Greene, Hard Country;
Sidney Furie, The Jazz Singer (with Neil
Diamond); Gilbert Cates, Oh God, Oh
God; Bob Rafelson, The Postman Always
Rings Twice; Howard Zieff, Private[...]ott
Mansfield, who Fell Asleep; Michael
Wadleigh, The Wolten; Woody Allen, A
Woody Allen Film.

Bruce M[...]e); Australian director
Philippe Mora has secured the rights to
the upcoming book, Errol Flynn: The Un-

told Story, by Charles Higham (to be
r[...]day Press in April).

Jerry Schatzberg (Seduction of Joe
Tynan) is mixing Honeysuckle Rose for
Warner Bros. before starting The Duke
of Deception, the first feature for CBS
Theatrical Films; Wim Wenders directs
Hammett for producer Fred Roos with
Francis Ford Coppola executive
producer; Walter Hill has wrapped The
Long Riders.

Ongoing shooting: Jerry Jameson,
Raise the Titanic; John Schlesinger,
Honky Tonk Freeway; Jo[...]Keeler. Lady Grey: Super-
star; John lrvin, Dogs of War (Norman
Jewison executive producer); Michael
Ritchie, Divine Madness; Boaz Davidson,
Seed of Innocence; Alan Roberts, The
Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood.

MGM’s new prod[...]ounced John Derek
will produce and direct Tarzan, the Ape
Man, with Bo Derek (10) as Jane. No
Tarzan si[...]ersal,
Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton have
signed for The Best Little Whorehouse in
Texas, with Peter Masterton directing.
Brian de Pa|ma's Home Movies, made
with the cinema students at Sarah Law-
rence College, and featuring Kirk
Douglas, is to get national release mid-
May,

BRITAIN

Only the presence of major films which
started shooting last year and have
resumed in January kept the British
studios busy in the first quarter of 1980.

Superman 2: The Adventure Con-
tinues (Richard Donner and Richard[...]sh Gordon (Mike Hodges).
Reds (Warren Beatty) and The Sea
Wolves (Andrew McLag|en) are still
before the cameras, with the latter still on
location in India and not expected to be
in London for studio work until early May.

Franklin Schaffner is in Budapest on
The Sphinx, but will utilise London
studios for several weeks, and post-
production will be centred in the British
capital.

Guy Hamilton has Elizabeth Tayl[...]Lansbury in Agatha Christie’s
Miss Marple caper The Mirror Crack’d;
Mathew Chapman is directing Dread;

1_i\'._t|_i_,";t\lN.'

i<‘-,C:H-‘«l?[i 5 Vt-llNGS

Paul Annett, second to the Right and On
Till Morning (Brian West - Wake in
Fright — is director of photography);
Chris Slatter, My School Project, at
Chamberlain Studios.

American director Robert Altman is
lensing Popeye with Robin Williams and
Shelley Du[...]d has flown in a
mainly British crew. David Lynch is
directing The Elephant Man, with John
Hurt and Anthony Hopkins.

Peter Frazer Jones is directing George
and Mildred, based on the long-running
television comedy series; Ridley Scott
(Alien) has set up London offices to
prepare for next year's start on Dune for
Dino de Laurentiis; producer Ismail
Merchant and director James Ivory (The
Europeans) are shooting Jane Austen in
the U.S. for London Weekend Tele-
vision, but the film may get cinema
screenings in selected territ[...]Television are more than pleased with
progress on the big-budgeted The Curse
of King Tutankhamumu’s Tomb, now on
location in Egypt with Harry Andrews and
Eva Marie Saint in.the lead roles. Direc-
tor is Philip Leacock, who was in Austra-
lia for Adam’s Woman (filmed as Return
of the Boomerang) in 1971. Now there is
a suggestion the film may go into cinema
release before its planne[...]ppe Mora) and
Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolomowski
(The Shout) are teaming again with Vic-
tor Post, a th[...]l expects to start pre-
production in mid-June on The Monster
offor the his-
torical action-drama The Wonderful
Adventures of Paul Bunyan.

CANADA

After a year of whirlwind production
there is an early air of concern among
Canadian filmmakers as 1980 gets un[...]balls, Running,
Silent Partner, Murder by Decree) the
Canadians started overhauling Britain as
the world's second-biggest English
language film producer.

General temp; of production is slightly
down in the first three months of 1980,
and there are widespread grumblings
about the quality of many films of 1979,
including the majority which involved
Canadian Film Development Corpora-
tion funds.

Directors’ Guild of Canada spokes-
man Bob Barclay says too many of the
films utilising government funds were “of
dubious quality”. Barclay says: "We've
been spe[...]f this syndrome takes over, we're in big
trouble. The CFDC has taught everyone
how to talk about the sizzle and not about
the steak."

Biggest film off the ramps this year is
Tribute, based on the award-winning
Broadway play. Jack Lemmon stars, with
Lee Remick and Robby Benson co-
starring. The Canadian Actors Guild Op-
posed Remick’s signing and several
weeks of threats and disputes followed.
When the financiers threatened to
move production back to the U.S. differ-

John Huston has wrapped Phobia with
P[...]Max Fischer will use Canadian and Dutch
locations for The Lucky Star, with Rod
Steiger and Louise Fletcher; Rafael
Zielinski is producing-directing Babe in
Montreal with Buddy H[...]owitz to direct Misdeal.