THE IMPULSE TO KILL

...Needless to say, the authorities don't approve — of either the symbol or the process...

...It's an approach that distinguishes her from right-wing fogies bent on 12 July 1985: 407 regimentation — and today, at least in higher education, from left-wing humanities professors with their sublime disdain for what an American adolescent could be expected to know or like...

...That is, although we recognize something of ourselves in the folksy ways of Mafia hoods when they make love, or pass cookies to grandchildren, or discuss interior decoration, we lose any sense of identity, or even relevance, when they lack any semblance of emotional depth...

...Despite all the parallels, however, one thing is missing, a representation of genuine humanity at the core of the plot...

...But Nicholson's hit-man is never allowed to grow, or even to feel real conflict...

...She explains that she wants to reach their "undermind" as a tool to lead them toward reading and writing...

...The best parts of the film involve Sylvia's attempts to tie that openness to books...

...It also imitates director John Huston's film noir masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon...

...In the feature that follows, the young Ashton-Warner, played by the strangely beautiful Eleanor David, seeks to turn the fears and destructive anxieties of Maori children into creative expression...

...The film is a kind of comic Godfather, pushing the Mafia juxtaposition of family values and "Family" violence to farcically ironic extremes...

...But Huston is so intent on debunking sentiment that he winds up impoverishing emotional content, which is quite another matter...

...Prizzi's Honor lacks the depth of its analogs — the spirituality of The Godfather, when we watch Michael Corleone descend into the inferno of Mafia chiefdom...

...Huston is a master at plotting the relations of greed and irony (witness also The Treasure of Sierra Madre...

...PRIzzI's honor is curious: though filled with echoes, it lacks resonance...

...Huston's main character is finally a puppet, and the satire, accordingly, skin deep...

...Nicholson brings the hit-man to half-life, not just with perfect idiomatic Sicilian American, but with well-timed dumbo gestures and a pair of eyebrows arched to resemble a mini-Satan's...

...Although we marvel at the tour-de-force of its intrigue, it feels, in the last analysis, like an empty work...

...Screen THE IMPULSE TO KILL 'SYLVIA' & 'PRIZZTS HONOR' Sylvia documents the efforts of Sylvia Ashton-Warner, the New Zealand (and eventually British) educational reformer and artist whose success in stirring student creativity has had a strong, positive impact on modern education...

...The rushed character of the narrative is all too evident when we are told offhandedly that the Second World War has been on for some time in Europe — though presumably not in the Pacific...

...Huston probably intended Nicholson's lack of development as another anti-romantic gesture (even at its close, Prizzi's Honor raises hopes for change only to dash them...

...As Maerose, Angelica — with her elegant version of Cher's looks and a magnificent mimic Brooklynese — steals the romantic fire from Kathleen Turner, who, in one of the film's smaller surprises, is a Prizzi contract killer...

...The director seems to dare us not to care, or even to snicker...

...On its own terms, however, it risks "the imitative fallacy" when it portrays empty people...

...Huston would probably counter that his new film wasn't intended to echo their depth...

...True to the film's irony, he is most convincing when slobbishly in love, at once both pathetically deep (compared to his normal state) and painfully superficial (compared to the rest of mankind...

...Fortunately, in this case at least, the story is strong enough to survive, and even inspire...

...It's a powerful concept, powerfully portrayed...

...When Sylvia sticks to the classroom, the film is magical, partly because of David's intense performance, Firth's directing, and the charm of a mixed group of New Zealand and Maori youth, whose innocence repeatedly steals the scene...

...A fine concluding moment occurs when children and teacher place a Maori carving over the school gate to illustrate that this is their place of learning...

...To her, education is genuinely what its Latin root specifies: a leading forth...

...or the tragic tone of The Maltese Falcon, when Sam Spade discovers, albeit late, honor at the expense of eros...

...Angelica plays Maerose Prizzi, whose broken engagement — four years before the action of the film begins — provides hidden unity to the story...

...they are artless, shy, often silent, sometimes rather annoying, and spontaneously open...

...One may take both female roles as John Huston's unsentimental comment on whether or not the world would be a less violent place if women ruled nations...

...But, from me at least, he won a shrug...

...Superbly directed by New Zealander Michael Firth, the film begins with a documentary prelude, where we see the real Ashton-Warner in her late sixties explaining how, as a beginning teacher, she wanted to "find in students the impulse to kill — to harness it...

...TOM O'BRIEN Commonweal: 408...

...Prizzi's Honor might better have been titled Angelica's Revenge, for it is finally her "honor" that secretly prevails over macho Sicilian definitions of the term...

...The Maori lack that cultivated cuteness and nauseating precocity of children in American films...

...it adds to evocations of past films an entirely new, and peculiarly twisted feminist element, embodied in the exotically voluptuous daughter of the director, Angelica Huston...

...Ashton-Warner emphasizes that, to do so, one must start with the children themselves, with what they already know and care about, with their roots and background, with what can intrigue or interest them — with what, in brief, is on their minds...

...But the result is too diffuse, blurring the importance and drama of Sylvia's classroom achievements with tidbits of her home life, tentative adultery, tentative lesbianism, and some shorthand notes on New Zealand sociology...

...Reaching children is the most important aspect of teaching today...

...superficial...

...appropriately, the children start the process on their own, one day adopting words that they find important, then inspiring their teacher with a method of assembling their words into stories...

...Prizzi's Honor is not merely imitative...

...This is most clear in his treatment of Nicholson's character, Partanna...

...Nobody suffers too much pain in Prizzi's Honor, not in killing (with typical gangland sangfroid), not even in dying, which is approached in a casual, businesslike way...

...With such slapdash attempts to include too much, Sylvia is typical of a certain category of foreign film that does everything but stick to the story...

...In some ways, her notion is as old as Rousseau's Emile, in which teachers are taught to teach writing by stimulating the desire to write...

...Worse, Nicholson suffers little pain over the eventual conflict between his Family and family, i.e., the woman he eventually marries...

...In the new film, hit-man Charlie Partanna (Jack Nicholson) must eventually punish, on a point of honor, his beloved (Kathleen Turner), just as Humphrey Bogart sent Mary Astor "up the river" in the earlier movie...

...new york N. Y. 10016 transfigures Partanna into Romeo...

...Director Firth has aimed at a reasonable goal, a slice of three years of his subject's life...

...But Ashton-Warner adds to this the concept of the teacher as artist, one who reveals the genuine potential of raw material...

...Its superficiality is not profound, but, alas...

...In Prizzi's Honor, he also COMMONWEAL ASSOCIATE Patron Member: $200 or more Charter Member: $100 Suataining Member $50 Commonweal Foandation 232 Madison Ave...

...The problem with Sylvia is that the film strays too far outside the classroom setting...