Screen:
Jr, Colin L Westerbeck
Screen NO CAUSE FOR ALARM THE HUMOR OF BELL FORSYTH PART WAY through Bill Forsyth's Local Hero, there's a scene that opens with a half dozen Scottish fishermen standing along a railing by the...
...To him the modern mismatch of values, attitudes, and styles is only a mishmash...
...The villagers are paid a fortune for their homes without actually having to give them up...
...The one with the fishermen does that, as does a scene in which Mac's business associate is making love to a beautiful female oceanographer who also works for the oil company...
...Peculiar intercourse between generations, cultures or races, to say nothing of sexes, is a rather frequent occurrence in Forsyth's films...
...Like the coastal village where the film is set, these men are so picturesque that they might be posed for a postcard, except that at the end of the line, also lounging against the rail, is a girl...
...The impossible, incompatible mix of people in Local Hero includes, besides the teenager and the fishermen, a congregation of rural Scots with a black minister, a psychiatrist with a Texas oil millionaire named Happer (Burt Lancaster) for a patient, and a respectable middle-aged woman from the fishing village who's having an affair of long standing with the captain of a Russian trawler...
...In another of the evening's episodes, one crusty old Scot says to a friend, "Four generations of farming the land, and now it's come to this...
...It's hard to tell just what the look on the men's faces means...
...Nor does it really try to be much of a -scene...
...Forsyth's best scenes always raise more questions than they answer...
...Now that he is back there, the phone is ringing away madly with no one to answer it...
...Who could that be, calling...
...His Scot's imagination has roughly the same effect on us that Scotland itself has on Mac...
...But Forsyth gets (pardon the expression) good mileage out of it...
...What makes Forsyth's film both novel and funny is that he sees little cause for alarm in all this...
...It works well enough as a tableau not to need to function as a scene...
...In his previous effort, Gregory's Girl, the young hero's relationship with his parents, teachers, and sister is very odd, but not half as odd as his relationship with girls his own age...
...As she ponders this, a little furrow forms in her brow, crumpling one end of the lightning bolt painted on her face...
...It's very hard to elaborate a fixed joke like this that isn't going anywhere...
...In Local Hero, as in Gregory's Girl, everything does...
...That there has been some hanky-panky between these quaint old fishermen and this Mod, surly girl is a possibility hanging heavily in the air as the scene ends...
...We become very mellow...
...All the men get sour expressions and look away...
...Local Hero has an equally enigmatic figure in the person of a motorcyclist who roars through the sleepy village, nearly killing Mac every time he wanders into the otherwise deserted street...
...Later on, for instance, at a a town social, the punk-ette throws herself at Mac...
...The closing shot is of the call box from which he has kept in touch with the company headquarters every day...
...Just when we're to the point where we can see the gag coming, he begins leaving it to our imagination...
...Tenderly, he begins kissing her feet...
...It's a stalemate that has to be accepted and enjoyed on its own impossible terms...
...The penguin always seems dazed and lost, and someone always tells it impatiently what room to go to...
...Or perhaps one of them is the father, but it's uncertain which one...
...He's different," she says with a slight Scottish burr on the r. More typically, however, there isn't even this much resolution to a scene...
...The modern world is invading the ancient village in Local Hero on all sides...
...A young Texan named Mac (Peter Reigert), who's there to buy the entire village as a site for an oil refinery, strolls by and makes polite conversation...
...Noticing.a baby in a pusher by the girl, he asks-brightly whose it is...
...At last a day comes when he steps out of the inn chatting with a business associate, and without even needing to think about it, momentarily restrains the chap from stepping into the street...
...They're very happy about this, and the oilman, Happer - he's happiest of all...
...Either way, it's fine with them...
...But it's nice to think about...
...The open-ended quality of Forsyth's sense of humor makes him a master of the running gag...
...Mac is nowhere in sight as the motorcycle tears down the street and disappears past a building, from behind which Mac now scampers into view, having obviously had the usual close call...
...We can't really figure it out, like most things in this film...
...He himself has no capacity for alienation, nor does he endow his characters with any...
...But then he stops again because he notices that she has webbed toes...
...The scene is already funny, just from the visual with which it begins...
...This is why the scene between the punk rocker and the fishermen, so characteristic of Forsyth's sense of humor, doesn't get us anywhere...
...Then instead of falling into melancholy silence, he and the friend go on contentedly discussing whether the millions to which it's come is in pounds or dollars...
...in fact, she's just emerged from it and is lying on the rocks in her wet suit, sunning, when the young man decides to try taking a few liberties with her...
...Is it that they are too prudish and old-fashioned to discuss such things with a stranger...
...In Gregory's Girl, there is a dilly, a student at the high school Gregory attends who wanders the halls in a penguin costume...
...No one says anything...
...Whereupon the cycle roars by right on cue...
...End of scene...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR.ERBECK, JR...
...What begins with a tableau ends as a black-out, never quite working itself up into a scene...
...Screen NO CAUSE FOR ALARM THE HUMOR OF BELL FORSYTH PART WAY through Bill Forsyth's Local Hero, there's a scene that opens with a half dozen Scottish fishermen standing along a railing by the beach...
...The social has been held to celebrate the sale of the town to the oil company...
...Here as elsewhere, Forsyth gently pries us loose from reality...
...Her boyfriend becomes quite upset and asks her what she sees in him...
...We're sure that even if we do nothing - indeed, despite the fact that there's nothing anybody can do - everything will work out well in the end...
...She's in punk gear with a rooster comb of spiky hair dyed various metallic colors and, for make-up, a lightning bolt painted on her face...
...The only person who seems a bit forlorn is Mac, because he has to return to Texas...
...The Russian trawler is in their harbor, Texans want to tear down their houses to build a pipeline, and their kids dress up like Martians...
...This lass seems to spend all her time in the water...
...Sometimes these black-outs do end with a bit more of a punchline...
Vol. 110 • March 1983 • No. 6
