On Screen

...The implication seems to be that whereas God does not obey our commands, the Devil heeds them But if the driver was uncharitable, f>erhaps his whole life long, he may have deserved this pumshment Yet, why, in that case, must the punishment wait on an irreligious tramp's demanding it9 Or is the punishment unjust, our own evil wishes wreaking havoc on other people9 Then why is this illustrated in terms of a stonyhearted rich man who races his car past poor, pleading voyagers9 A rich man, moreover, whose shoes fit the victim of his contumely as if by divine Providence It is all extremely confusmg, though it makes a provocative splash on the screen To obfuscate matters further, the Devil turns on the car radio, gets a peculiar Spanish sermon, then turns the radio off This, like a good deal of what follows, may be a veiled dig at Franco's Spain, though none of it becomes clear In fact, the last, Spanish section of the journey is full of events so bizarrely surreal—people stepping from the present into the past and back again, strange bedfellows materializing out of nowhere in people's beds, and many more—that I can no longer speak of loose ends in the plot, only of a screw loose somewhere I do not mean to say that surrealism equals madness, but I do thmk that the way m which Bunuel casually introduces it into a realistic context, and as casually drops it again, is artistically and psychically suspect There are, to be sure, parts of the film that are perfectly plain and unequivocal, such as the duel between the Jansemst and the Jesuit, in which the two are ready to kill each other over points of dogma, only to depart a while later, arms slung around each other and perfectly reconciled The point is that, however great the doctrinal dissensions, the Church always restores its solidarity and solidity, holy water being thicker than bad blood But both the quarrel and the reconciliation are ineffably petty Such scenes make simple points in a moderately dramatic way, yet even if all of them worked, which they do not, the result would be less than commanding So I kept hoping for some orgiastic or brilliantly perverse sexuality to dazzle me, but whenever Bunuel is on the verge of it, he backs away Take the scene played in Latin (with a veritable Babel of Latin pronunciations) where the heretical Bishop PrisctUian justifies fleshly indulgence as giving the Devil, who created the flesh, his due The more the flesh is mortified through sexual excess, he argues, the more we can detach our souls and render them unto God But the orgy this builds up to is barely adumbrated After the Marquis de Sade, in another sequence, has lectured a chained and bloodied victim on the idiocy of her trust in God—the scene is actually from Justine—and she continues to defy him with her faith, he moves toward her to let her have it Blackout Again, a nun's crucifixion is played almost for laughs, the sadomasochism Bunuel could depict brilliantly left unexplored The real Bunuel refuses to stand up Just as many episodes in the film are obscure and ambiguous, the overall meaning remains inscrutable The whore (a part on which the gifted Delphme Seyrig is wasted) tells the tramps that there is no point m going on to the shrine?ever since it has been revealed that the bones buned there are Pnscil-han's and not St James', pilgrims no longer come and the tramps would find nobody to hustle And, as I said, the three go off to procreate a pitiless offspring Pierre and Jean, with their typical names (used to similar effect by Maupassant in his novel, Pierre et Jean), are humanity led astray from its pious destination—exactly as the other Way of St James, the path of Christianity through the ages, has strayed from sanctity to heresy Or is this negative interpretation correct...

...The tramps, after all, are only doing what the God-figure predicted and, very possibly, wanted from them And if it is true that the relics are Pnscillian's, that too may be for the best, perhaps what is needed is an untrammeled self-fulfillment, a carnal religion, which the tramps' offspring may institute But, again, the whore may easily be lying to the tramps, God having prophesied their monstrous paternity as punishment for them and mankind for getting sidetracked?and the former interpretation holds The mind boggles Some of the blame may devolve on Jean-Claude Carnere, who previously collaborated with Bunuel on two of his worst films...

...On Screen FROM THE MILKY WAY TO THE BIG A BY JOHN SIMON As I mentioned last time, most reviewers saw in The Milky Way the "massive assault on the Roman Catholic Church" that Brad Darrach of Life at least had the courage to identify Several others merely hint at this, while still others equivocate And so, regrettably, does Bunuel himself Take the episode where the tramps, on a stormy night, find shelter in a shed Jean, the younger and sassier one, is amazed to find the elderly Pierre believing m God Jean steps out into the tempest, bares his chest, and challenges God to strike him down Nothing happens But as Jean reenters the shed, lightning strikes a nearby hut "It didn't hit me, after all, Jean remarks "Imbecile," Pierre retorts, "do you think God is at your disposal9" Now what does this mean9 That religion fraudulently interprets random but vaguely applicable phenomena as not accidental and irrelevant but proof positive of the existence and omnipotence of God9 Or the opposite, that miracles can be explained away by atheists, because the mveterate scoffer, not satisfied down to his least whim, can always find something inconclusive about them7 The incident is deliberately ambiguous In another episode, the tramps are stumbling on, exhausted Pierre's shoes are about to expire, the soles having almost completely left the vamps A fancy sports car roars down the pike and ignores Jean's plea for help "Break your neck, you bastard1" Jean shouts after the car, and turns away from the road not expecting anything further A tew seconds go by, then crash1 The car has been reduced to a John Chamberlain junk sculpture, the driver is dead, and m the back sits an antiquely garbed youth, smirking (The program identifies him as the Devil, and, since he is played by the loathsome Pierre Clementi, one is willing to lend it credence ) Jean exclaims that he was not aware of another passenger before No, says the youth, it was Jean's imprecation that put him in there He then instructs Pierre to take the dead man's gorgeous shoes, which Pierre does What of this now...

...Diary of a Chambermaid and Belle de Jour The color photography by Christian Matras, one of my three favorite French cinematographers of the old school (the other two veteran masters being Roger Hubert and Claude Renoir), functions unobtrusively and effectively Among the actors, few get a chance to act Two come off best Julien Bertheau, as a maitre d'hotel who spouts Catholic orthodoxy as he exudes headwaiterly punctilio, but practices perfect unchantableness, and Agnes Capri, the diseuse, who teaches her little girls to recite fierce anathemata as if they were the poetry of "our great poets, Racine, Lamartme, and Henri de Regmer"—a juxtaposition that is m itself an anathema Bewildered by all the references to Photmus and Cleobulus, Mar-cion and Nestorius, a puzzled young woman-reviewer asked me if I could recommend any reading matter that would fill her in on these things I suggested Migne's Patio-logia in 300-odd volumes, it might take a while to read, but less long than to unscramble The Milky Way Sadly...

...now, I must report on the first major film disappointment of the year, Zabriskie Point Ever since Michelangelo Antoniom announced that he was making his initial film about and in America, I have been wondering what the collision of that irresistible mind with this immovable Leviathan would be like It now appears that Antoniom's view of the USA is no more incisive or subtle than that of your average cultivated, snobbish European, which is enough for some semipertinent, semi-imperti-nent generalizations, but not for an insightful work ot art The idea materialized for Antoniom, apparently, when he stood on the lookout platform at Zabriskie Point and gazed across the gyp-sum-and-borax dunes and declivities of Death Valley Here, with the salt-like crystals blowing about him, the vision crystallized America as a desert, a death-trap, the bleached and pulverized bones of once living hills and valleys In it, a few young people are trying to plant new Me, by making love and also war—on materialism, racism, capitalist despotism The film turns out to be, I am afraid, the case of a man who finds a button in the street and has a suit made to match it Let us consider the plot Black and white student revolutionaries at a Los Angeles university plan a demonstration and the takeover of a building One young man, Mark, walks out on the meeting in disgust He says he is prepared to die, but not of boredom He later says that he will join the activists when they are determined to win, not just to fight a losing action A young girl, Dana, is seen trying to retrieve a book she left on the roof of the Sunny Dunes Development Co , but is refused admission until its chief executive, Lee Allen, who happens to be passing by, takes her under his wing Later we learn that she became his secretary and, presumably, mistress Meanwhile, a large group of student and faculty demonstrators are being booked at a police station, when Mark tries to bail out his roommate and does not kowtow to the police, he is roughly tossed behind bars with the rest Mark and a friend purchase guns with the utmost ease when they tell the dealer that they must protect their womenfolk m a borderlme neighborhood "One more thing about the law," another salesman warns them, "it you shoot them m the back yard, be sure to drag them into your house " At a later demonstration, a Negro student is wantonly shot down by the police on the pretense that he is carrying a gun, which he is not Mark reaches for his weapon to shoot one of the cops, but before he can do so (at least that is how I interpret the elliptic editmg here), somebody else does and Mark flees the scene His roommate tells him on the telephone that he or someone like him was caught by the television cameras on the scene of the shooting Mark goes to the airport, picks a likely plane, and, despite protests from the operations tower, takes off Dana, meanwhile, is supposed to meet Lee at his Xanadu in Phoenix, Anzona, where there is to be a business meeting She is driving down in an old Buick she borrowed, and causes Lee, who doesn't know where she is, much concern While Lee is watching a ghastly Sunny Dunes tv commercial in the company of his assembled staff, he gets a phone call from Dana, already in the Mojave Desert, asking him to help her locate some town ending in "ville or something" where she is to meet a guru to meditate with It turns out she is in the very town (not ending m "ville" or anything like it), where the bartender blames the guru's crowd for local unrest She does not find him, but is rushed instead by a bunch of 10-year-olds who want "a piece of arse " She has a hard time escaping from the kids, then drives on Flying in fine fettle over the desert, Mark spots Dana stopping to get water for her tank from a roadside container (The harry young man must have a bald eagle's eye to be able to tell from that height, and at his speed, that the girl below is attractive ) He proceeds to buzz her car in the most spectacular stunt flying I have seen in some tune (how does a mere student come by such aerobatic skills9) until she gets out and scrawls an obscene message in the sand He drops a red nightshirt for her, and, on a desert landing strip, they meet They go off to get gasoline tor the plane, but end up off Zabnskie Point, gamboling in the gypsum She "Don't you feel at home here It's peaceful " He "It's dead " She turns on, and he tells her how he became a dropout Pretty soon she turns to him, he drops on her, and they start balling in the borax Scores of other nude or semmude couples and triples appear scattered across the lunar-looking landscape and perform some rather peculiar sexual games, a veritable hippie Thebaid I take them to be Dana's vision, and they promptly vanish A state trooper chances upon Dana in the desert-Mark has hidden behind a latrine, the cop questions and eyes Dana suspiciously, and Mark, from his hideout, makes ready to shoot him Dana stands between the gun and the policeman who, finally, drives away It emerges that Mark is the fellow she heard about in the newscasts who stole a plane When she asks if he might also be the one who shot a cop, Mark says he was beaten to it by another gun Why did he steal the plane9 "I needed to get off the ground " Why does he now choose to return it, knowing the nsks9 "I want to take risks " So Mark, Dana, and an old painter who lives in the desert repaint the plane naked breasts, weird faces, psychedelic sex and antiwar slogans "They may not even think it's a plane Some prehistonc monster with its genitals hangmg out" Mark flies back to L A , and the foregathered police kill him without warning Dana hears of Mark's death over the car radio, in between the rock music she keeps listening to She stops in front of some totemic cactuses but cannot weep She arrives at Lee's supenanch-style house curving around a mountainside boulder It is Frank Lloyd Wright on the outside, and frankly wrong inside, full of vulgar furniture and bibelots By the pool, sleek young women gossip In a grotto, Dana steps under a spray of water and cries for Mark Inside the house, Lee and some businessmen bicker about the proposed Sunny Dunes housing development here Dana watches through the plate glass, horrified Lee spots her and directs her to her room Instead, she starts dnvmg away, but stops a short way off She fingers the red nightshirt and steps out of the car Looking back at Lee's house with loathing, she has another vision The house explodes with a blast resembling an atom bomb's Some half dozen times the house blows up, seen from ever closer by, at last from almost inside the explosion Next, there is a series of slow-motion shots, showing the contents of the house and the poolside furniture floating through the blue air, like bactena m a tinted preparation under a microscope Exploding clothes, tv set, refngerator, food, books, magazines glide through the azure, led by such recognizable coryphees as Kellogg's K, Wonder Bread, Look magazine, an eviscerated fish, a genuine chicken and a plastic lobster in a doomsday ballet Dana smiles and dnves on into one of the most succulent sunsets ever photographed, the sun going down like a giant Sunkist orange oozing California orange juice all over the sky and screen If this signifies the end of a corrupt old society to be followed by a younger, better one, I wish it did not look quite so much hke one of those billboards Zabnskie Point has been mockingly lingering over all along Antomom has made, as I shall argue next time, the one thing I would not have believed him capable of a naive film...