On Screen

...Old Lodge Skins, if that is the Chief's own voice, as well as his face and body, on screen, we are in the presence of a great Manitou-given acting talent Very pleasant, too, is Dustin Hoffman in the lead, always endearing with that sour-grapefruit face and voice of his, both of which, paradoxically, ooze the juice of human kindness There is also a succulent piece of acting by Faye Dun-away as a lusty slut whose heart, like her hand, wants gold In a good supporting cast--only Cal Bellini as a contrary Indian is unconvincing--I particularly liked Robert Little Star as a faggoty brave, and Amy Eccles as an enchanting (and too-good-and-pretty-to-be-true) squaw There are moments of vivid, almost scarring, visual loveliness, usually at times when the idyllic life of an Indian camp is about to be raped and destroyed by the U S Cavalry Thus it is a somewhat tendentious loveliness, but no matter Particularly handsome are the views of such a camp from across a river, the framing effect of the water and the general composition of the shots are admirable In one remarkable sequence the Cavalry is first heard but not seen, and then, ever so slowly, eerily, chillingly, beautifully emerges from the mists At other tunes, Harry Stradling Jr's color cinematography is merely ordinary, especially in the indoor scenes The music, assembled or composed by John Hammond, though organic in its folksy, country-western way, is less than outstanding Most of the scenes involving Custer strain too hard to be swingingly antimilitaristic, and end up being sweatily unfunny Still, in a poor field of contenders, Little Big Man is several arrowheads ahead How disappointing a follow-up to Z, that fine piece of commercial filmmaking, is Costa-Gavras' new movie, The Confession Based on an account by Artur and Lise London, it has a screenplay by Jorge Semprun (Z, La Guerre Est Finie), and absolutely solid color photography by the wonderful Raoul Coutard This is the autobiographical story of what Stalinist Communism, in this case in Czechoslovakia, could do to its victims Based on the infamous Slansky trial, as related by one of the three surviving defendants (the rest were executed), it is a thoroughly detailed account of how physical and psychological torture unmans people and breaks up long, happy marriages, of how the most self-incriminating confessions can be extracted from innocent people, and of how hard it is to shake a true Communist's faith in his party, even when that party is slowly and brutally killing him I have not read the Londons' book, and cannot say whether it adds to our knowledge of what previous books, journalistic accounts, plays and films have already told us The film version certainly does not It is all there in minute, agonizing particulars, but barring some unvital details, we knew from earlier sources about these monstrous cruelties, subtle undermining techniques, and purblind belief in the party There must exist by now a vast enough library on the subject to furbish a thriving doctoral program The Confession, besides being harrowingly accurate, does nothing, it refuses to extend its indictment to Communism in general, or, more appropriately, to human nature itself It does not even answer the obvious questions of why London in particulai should have been spared the death penalty, or how he and his wife became reconciled, or what the children made of all this, or why he continues to be a Communist To London, this entire grisly chapter of history that nearly killed him proves only that Stalinism was bad To put it another way the unjust suffering of the inarticulate is as sad as that of a poet, but the inarticulate cannot shed light beyond narrating the facts more or less well, while a poet pushes through to greater understanding of the underlying truths Yves Monatand as London, and a large and unexceptionable cast, do everything they can, but an unrelieved chain of horrors, even though tactfully and artfully rendered, does not yield more than some sympathetic pain--and that, too, gradually fades into apathy over the film's very considerable stretch Moreover, the film will not convert anyone to anything Our youth who worship Ho and Mao as shining saviors will not be swayed by some grubby Slansky Affair m Stalinist Prague two decades ago At that, The Confession is preferable to Husbands John Cassavetes' latest quasi-documentary of boring middle-class lives This roughly 140-minute film scrutinizes in exhaustive detail a four-day escapade of three close friends Young-middle-aged husbands and fathers, the three attend the funeral of yet another friend, dead prematurely of a coronary Frightened by the combined shadows of death, growing old, and ever more predictably monotonous existences, they go on a bender that begins with a group beer-drinking marathon in a bar, continues with an almost equally interminable vomiting and quarreling session in the men's room, and climaxes in an impromptu flight to London--for more drinking, gambling and some wenching They take three girls to their hotel rooms The one husband who makes out best (and had the biggest falling out with his wife) elects to remain in London, the other two go back, unconvinced, to Long Island and their families As m Cassavetes' previous films, notably Faces, the actors improvise around the semblance of a plot for all they're worth These improvisations, to be sure, seem to be first taken down on paper, then memorized and filmed, yet improvisations, group efforts, they remain, and thus the opposite of art There is a terrible irony in all this, for Cassavetes desperately yearns to create art, but thinks that this is achieved by the ad hoc piling of dreary, footling detail on detail, and hoping for an immense, shattering truth--which is rather like piling grains of sand on top of one another and expecting the result to be Mount Everest Or, better perhaps, it is as if the filmmaker shot the human face only in extreme close-up (actually what Cassavetes tends to do), concentrating on nothing but pores and pimples--every last one of them--on the assumption that the result will automatically be a searching analysis of the face and its owner In fact, Husbands tells us very little about its three principals, and much of that is commonplace, even cliche Certainly, these are commonplace lives, but here, again, the penetrating and ordering imagination of an artist would be needed to reach beyond what we already know--and, above all, to curb the endless complacency and self-importance with which this film dawdles and maunders, like some senile imbecile traipsing about in his own excrement The performances, however, are consistently good, as they are likely to be when actors are indulged at the expense of everything and everyone else Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk give such impeccable embodiments to mediocrity as to make Husbands boring almost as much by its perfect naturalism as by its imperfect grasp of art Two straight cinema-verite films, Gimme Shelter and Groupies, recommend themselves not so much by the skill of their makers as by the baleful fascination of their subjects I shall discuss them in detail next time, meanwhile, you might want to see them for the sake of sharpening our critical dialogue But, I warn you, they will not make your Christmas merrier...

...On Screen HAMMERING IT IN BY JOHN SIMON Little Big Man is the sort of movie that makes you wish you had read the novel It is very good in spots, heavy-handed and obvious m others, tries too hard in places, yet occasionally darts with elegant ease to a perfect bull's-eye It does not come off as a whole because it is too episodic, which could work better in a book where the author can take his time, and because it is unsure of its style, which may not be the case with Thomas Berger's novel But m Calder Willingham's screenplay, under Arthur Penn's direction, the film goes from realism to absurdism, from satire to sentimentality, without finding a consistent tone This is as unnerving as having your fellow conversationalist's voice constantly change from a resonant bass to a castrato's treble and back again The film is the autobiographical narrative of a 120-year-old man, the sole white survivor of Custer's Last Stand, who tells the story of the West, the Indians and Custer as it really was, and tells it in his hospital ward to a tape-recording historian Unfortunately, we leave our hero, Jack Crabb, whom we followed from his capture by Indians at the age of 10, at a point where he seems to be in his mid-30s, and the missing years strike me as an almost unbearable lacuna Another serious trouble is that Jack, for all that he is the only fully rounded character of the tale, does not develop into anything meaningful or even discernible m the end He may have learned the truth about red men and white, and some other colors as well, but we are not made aware of what the truth has done to him In the latter part of the film, he becomes a dipsomaniac, but this seems to be only a phase, otherwise he would not have reached his phenomenal age Or, if the point is that overindulgence leads to longevity, nothing is made of it Nevertheless, if you look at the film as a series of cavalierly tacked together vignettes, an estimable number of these works, either in part or even as a whole Here the fact that some rather fantastic material is handled in a low-key, offhand way distinctly helps, and Penn has elicited several tasty performances By far the most impressive is that of Chief Dan George as the venerable sachem...