On Screen

...to the images of certain stars St -Laurent's to Deneuve's, Chanel's to Delphine Seyng's, and Cardin's to Jeanne Moreau's Whichever way you slice it, Mermaid is a trivial film, but it does reveal one formerly hidden, or partly hidden, talent Mile Deneuve's bosom, which turns out to be very much better than the previously exposed square shoulders and somewhat wilted cube of a behind would have led one to expect M t is interesting to contrast this film with Henri Verneuil's The Sicilian Clan Verneuil is one of those slick, competent, routine directors of whom the French cinema over the years has produced a harvest second only to Hollywood's If the auteur theory had been evolved by Americans instead of Frenchmen, the grass would, of course, have seemed greener in Billancourt than in Burbank What sublime auteurs could then have been made out of Verneuil, De-coin, Marc Allegret, and a host of others, indeed, now that auteunsm has spread to America, certain French and French-based mediocrities like Abel Gance and Max Ophuls have been elevated to auteur status Still, I doubt that Ophuls, despite his certifiable mediocrity, would have entered the Pantheon, had he not turned out a certain number of Hollywood films, which is almost de rigueur for canonization Anyway, Verneuil is monstrously competent without a scintilla of genius The Sicilian Clan is nowhere near up to his best, but still has that smooth purposiveness Truffaut's film lacks Yet The Sicilian Clan is much more boring to watch It concerns another one of those super-heists brilliantly carried out despite overwhelming odds as well as a few unpredictable monkey wrenches tossed in by chance-only to be undone retroactively by a piddling utterance from the mouth of a babe It has all been done better before, and the final showdown between the dignified old mafioso, played by Jean Gabin, and the trigger-happy punk, outlined by Alain Delon, has no excitement whatever It is the final and visible trickling out of what was always, even if lively, a shallow stream Gabm is an imposing white whale of an old man, all bags and pouches under his snowy locks, but with blue eyes that still could stop a bullet m its tracks And since this film likewise invites petty speculation, let me raise the question whether any filmed eyes, however meltingly or mysteriously black, could ever compete in hauntingness with the blue ones of a Gabin, Brando, or Peter O'Toole'' I speak of male eyes, women's seem to function differently on screen To this blueness, Henn Decae's impeccable color photography contributes handsomely The film has other assets, such as the fine supporting performance by Lino Ventura as one of those dogged detectives who are always accorded one humanizing trait-in this case, a running battle with cigarettes, which the inspector proves unable to give up The gag is put to good albeit fairly standard use There is also a most engaging score by that gifted and versatile film composer, Ennio Morncone The only absolute liability, in fact, is Inna Demick When she was Darryl Zanuck's special protegee, no further question was necessary, now that Zanuck's attention has moved on, one must emphatically ask why Miss Demick remains The final interest of this pair of films lies m the different approaches to the thriller by the old pro and the young New Waver, the nouvelle vague having arisen precisely in opposition to the Verneuils and their ilk Quite obviously to anyone but himself, Truffaut is not content to let plot predominate-to permit imitation of Hitchcock, which is not much different from Verneuihsm, to maintain the upper hand Instead, a Renoinan side asserts itself, Mermaid, m fact, is dedicated to Renoir and begins with an awkwardly dragged in quotation from his La Marseillaise The chief Renoinan characteristic, a loving mvolvement with people, is very much present in Truffaut's film and makes it the worthier failure of the two Just as The Mississippi Meimaid and The Sicilian Clan form a pair of matched opposites from France, so Patton and Woodstock, two lengthy and elaborate American productions, can be viewed as kindred opposites On the surface, Woodstock is a youth film, celebrating peace, Patton a middle- and old-age film, glorifying war Upon closer scrutiny, both films become fuzzy and, in a sense, disturbingly merge into each other Patton is subtitled "Salute to a Rebel, which, ostensibly, means that Patton was in some way anti-Establishment and is, therefore, to be hailed But as history and the makers of the film know, if Patton was against the military Establishment, it was only in being more maniacal, megalo-mamacal, martial and martinetish Vaguely demented, perhaps, yet successful because, in the fanatical context of war, the true-blue fanatic has the advantage The film, directed by Franklin Schaffner and having for one of its scenarists Francis Ford Coppola (whose work is schizoidly divided between collaboration on "big" pictures such as this and Is Paris Burning' and smaller, supposedly, avant-garde films like You're a Bit...

...If the film seriously addressed itself to these problems, it could have indeed attained artistic importance But Patton's psyche, motives, background, and private life are not probed, or just barely, no worthy antagonists are pitted against him, the film is devoid of poetry The people remain two-dimensional, the battle scenes are just proficient battle scenes, the words spoken are prosaic and superficial Though some of the images, as noted, aic striking, that in itself does not make a film a work of art During the opening credits I noticed the fairly prominently displayed name of Abraxas Aaran, and wondered what sort of an actor it might belong to The closing credits identified him as Willy, the pit-bull terrier-the creepiest breed of dog there is, yet so ugly as to be almost endearing The ambiguity is very much akin to the one with which the movie views its hero, but what can be accepted at face value m a dog needs further investigation and analysis in a general and protagonist Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock suffers from a similar inadequacy But its exploration must be postponed until next time...

...Does the necessity of fighting back justify a war-lover as commander...

...Bov Now and The Ram People, with something like Finian's Rainbow uniting both sides of Coppola's incompetence), is a peculiarly slippery enterprise The filmmakers have clearly made a film to be read in opposite ways by hawks, as a tribute to unassuageable aggressiveness that partly pays off, by doves, as a portrait of bloodthirsty militancy, at least partly subdued in the end It is all rather like that famous message sent by Mortimer to the jailers of Edward II According to where you put the missing comma, it could mean that the kmg must die or must be spared Patton has been left carefully unpuctuated The film is made in Panavision 150, and the process, apparently, lends itself to unprecedented sharpness of photographic definition-or else, it is the achievement of Fred Koenekamp, the cinematographer Whatever the case, there are scenes in cool tonalities, like views of the desert on an overcast day or dimly lit interiors, that emerge with the sharpness of an etching and are nevertheless color photography The effect is almost painfully beautiful, thus in a scene in which Patton inspects GI graves in North Africa, featunng a series of extreme long shots all beige, grey and white, yet with each pale hue very much itself With Jerry Goldsmith's score here intoning the Patton theme, a kind of distant alarum for muted trumpets that is urgent and mournful and very lovely, the cumulative impact is profoundly enticing It makes it extremely hard not to be for Patton At other times, the film suggests much of the ruthlessness, delusions of grandeur, even beastliness of the man, and George C Scott's performance (blue eyes again') is the ideal vehicle for the concept Scott is unsurpassed it portraying a demonically dnven man who can, m turn, frighten you out of your skin with a look, a word, the weight of an implication He also has wit and charm and can make you laugh and rejoice with him-something Jack Palance, for example, could never do Why, then, isn't Patton art, since it has a tremendous ambiguity to explore and a first-rate actor to explore it with...

...On Screen MATCHED OPPOSITES BY JOHN SIMON Francois Truffaut's The Mississippi Mermaid (La Sirene du Mississippi) was greeted both here and abroad with almost unanimous displeasure On the whole, I agree that this particular siren can be easily resisted Truffaut makes two kinds of movies a kind that is autobiographical, or at least fraught with autobiographical implications, and generally good, and a kind that emulates one of his masters, Hitchcock, in plot and supposed suspense, and is, generally, bad The last of the second kind, The Bride Wore Black, was so foolish as to be intensely embarrassing, Mermaid is almost equally preposterous, yet I found it rather less dislikable The Mississippi Mermaid is based on a thriller by the same American writer who, under a different pseudonym, wrote The Bride Wore Black, and Truffaut's screenplay once again changes the novel's locale besides taking other liberties Louis Marie, a rich tobacco manufacturer on Reunion Island, a French possession in the Indian Ocean, poses as his own employe and gets himself a mail-order bride, Julie Roussel She turns out to be quite different from and much prettier than her picture, which she explains by having been too shy to send her own photograph This already is absurd Belmondo needing a mail-order bride9 And even though Julie turns out to be an impostor (her lover, with her assistance, killed the real Julie on shipboard), the idea of Catherine Deneuve as someone who could even pass for a mail-order bride passes understanding The rest of the film concerns Mahe's furious pursuit of Julie, who robs him of a fortune, and how vengefulness turns into abject adoration The pair end up living together after he rescues her from a cheap dancehall, the fortune having ended up with her former lover, now serving a long prison term for cop-killing But Mahe, too, is driven to kill the very private detective whom he himself hired to find Julie, and all this for a girl who, when they are hunted by the police and all the money is gone, starts slowly feeding rat poison to him We now come to the grand Truffaldian climax Earlier, when Mahe tried to shoot the faithless, thieving cheat, she urged him on?life no longer meant anything to her Whereupon Mahe discovered the strength of his love and chose to continue the marriage Now he finds that she has lied once again for the sake of the money he could still raise by selling his tobacco factory It is his turn to tell her he loves her so much he doesn't care if she kills him, if that is what she wants Things come full circle This time it is Marion (that is her real name, she was orphaned and had a terrible childhood that made her tough and whonsh) who seems overcome by the man's love She announces that she has at last learned the meaning of love and wants nothing more than to live with Louis She discontinues the rat poison diet, and through a snowy landscape they flee toward Switzerland Will they make it9 Will they be happy or has Marion been lying yet again9 It sounds corny, and so it is The theme, to be sure, was a favorite in French literature even before it reached its apogee m Proust It is the story of Manon and des Gneux, but the film lacks the simple un-self-consciousness of Prevost's narrative, it is the tale of Carmen and Don Jose, but the film lacks the brutal honesty of Menmee's ending, to say nothing of the sheer passion the novel generates Mermaid comes closest, perhaps, to Pierre Louys' Woman and Puppet, out of which von Sternberg made a campy, overrated film with Marlene Dietrich, and Julien Duvivier a flabby and flavorless one with Bngitte Bardot The idea of turning an essentially spineless spine-chiller into a passionate and tender film, using the mystery story only as a pretext (as Truffaut so successfully did in his earlier and very fine Shoot the Piano Player) is an attractive one It your actors are Belmondo and Deneuve, though, you are beaten before you begin Belmondo can act-in films like Two Women, Monkey m Winter and La Viaccia, he has made this clear But he needs a stronger script, a more eloquent part, or just a better partner In any case, he is not a great enough actor to turn dross into gold Mile Deneuve can portray a cool clotheshorse with a schoolgirl emotion or two, very nicely, as in La Chamade, beyond that her histrionic pittance will not stretch The love scenes between Belmon-do and Deneuve could not ignite a leaky gasoline tank, but oh what a younger Edwige FeutUere, Jeanne Moreau or Simone Signoret-even opposite Belmondo, and still more opposite Gerard Philipe ?could have done for this film' Up to a point, anyway, for the banalities and absurdities finally are too thick As things stand, Truffaut does best with some lighter touches, such as Deneuve stripping on a forest road and drivmg a passing motorist to the point of not being able to see either the forest or the trees Or, again, the scene m which Belmondo hides Deneuve's panties in his shirttront and turns the search for them into an aphrodisiac game ending with both him and her (though not simultaneously) getting into her pants There is frequent evidence of a fine director m control Thus there are good camera movements, effective without calling undue attention to themselves Notice how the scene m which Mahe awaits his bride at the dock of the steamer Mississippi (hence the unconvincing title) is built up Observe the suspense Truffaut can get out of whether a girl getting off the boat is or isn't Julie Consider the tempos of the film The whole first part m Reunion Island is really exposition to be gotten over with as quickly as possible Truffaut succeeds in maintaining a breakneck pace, without however neglecting a certain amount ot local color and minimal yet effective characterization of such minor characters as Julie's sister and Mahe's business adviser It is harder to determine whether the small part of the private eye is Truffaut's achievement-for it is a gem-or that of Michel Bouquet, an actor who can insinuate his subversive charm into any role Denys Clerval's color cinematography is competent, but all that can be said for Antome Duhamel's score is that it is used with economy-though here parsimony would have been even better Mile Deneuve gets in, as usual, an Yves St -Laurent wardrobe, and the two were clearly made for each other If one cared to descend into triviality?and a film like this will drive one to it-one could speculate on the contributions of certain couturier...

...Does an anachronistic vision of oneself as an old-style general-a combination Hannibal, Napoleon and Don Quixote, say?and the successful embodiment of that vision make one into a figure of tragic stature...