In Praise of the Well-Made Film

...Loot, directed by Silvio Narizzano, is a sad demonstration of how Joe Orton's black comedy, perfect for the stage, falls exasperatingly flat on screen, both when it tries to "open up" the play in filmic terms, and when it literalistically adheres to the original Most disheartening is Journey Though Rosebud, a supposedly sympathetic treatment of the plight of Indians on their reservations With a plodding scenarist like Albert Ruben and a pedestrian director like Tom Gries for friends, the Sioux need no enemies I am merely sorry that McGovern should have endorsed this tiresome contrivance But, then, I only want him for President, not for movie critic...

...The matching shots are never obvious For example, the delicate Dresden figurine of a dancer, which has just cost a good man s life, is whirling through the air, thrown away by the Nazi officers who ordered the execution This leads into a shot of the toothsome Montana Wildhack pirouetting in front of the blissful Billy and his dog Spot, to show off the sexy nightgown the Tralfamadorians have fetched for her from Sears Roebuck Consider how much is said with the juxtaposition of these two scenes and the way they are fitted together Edgar Derby is the one wholly decent and committed, albeit not very bright, man Billy meets in his life's pilgrimage, but Derby is shot like a dog for "looting," when all he does is innocently pick up a figurine that is the exact duplicate of one he had loved That first one was broken in a silly accident, this one has miraculously survived the fire-bombing of Dresden and seems to be a heaven-sent replacement destined for him...

...George Roy Hill knows how to use the filmmaker's finest instrument rhythm Thus the deaths of various minor characters on the way to German imprisonment are treated with swift, cold casualness as befits the casualties of war a quick shot of a body being marched past or trampled on, held just long enough for us to recognize the corpse In contrast, the architectural riches of Dresden (photographed in Prague, a similarly baroque city) and the faces of people having to live under war are dwelt on lovingly, as if the camera wanted to stay with them as long as possible and protect them against death, destruction, oblivion Particularly lingered over are the faces of young boys, American and German soldiers pressed into mutual murder -the visual equivalent of the novel's subtitle, The Children's Crusade...

...Vonnegut has cunningly constructed his novel so that everything Billy says about that wonderful place may be the quiet ravings of a gentle madman or gospel truth, a clinically explicable delusion or a mind-boggling miracle There are signposts throughout rigorously pointing both ways Why not If you go south long enough, you get to the North Pole...

...Billy is, furthermore, an ineptly brought up child, a passive husband and bemused father, the sole survivor of an air crash, a patient in a mental hospital Eventually, he is killed by a psychotic former fellow GI, who has sworn an insane vengeance against him In between, however, he also inhabits the planet Tralfamadore, whither he has been mysteriously transported because its audible but invisible inhabitants want to study the mating habits of earthlings-for which purpose they supply him with the luscious starlet Montana Wildhack, barely audible but eminently visible and palpable...

...This little dancer, however, leads Edgar straight into the dance of death a life for a figurine that the very SS officers who order poor old Derby shot promptly throw away What a cruel, unjust place this world is 1 But from the dancer tossed back into the rubble we cut to Montana doing her mating-dance for Billy on Tralfamadore another dancer, another good man, another world Somewhere in the universe people do get their just recompense But where is this enlightened planet...

...From what I have been able to glean from a skimming of Kurt Vonnegut Jr's novel, it is a little more convoluted, a little jumpier than Stephen Geller's screenplay But the able scenarist may have come up with a script that is more satisfying than the book It follows the real or imaginary (and no less real for that) adventures of Billy Pilgrim, who keeps slipping backward and forward in time Captured by the Germans in World War II and a member of a work detail billeted in a Dresden slaughterhouse, he is one of the survivors of the terrible Allied fire-bombing that razed that beautiful open city...

...Unstuck in time,' as Billy says, he travels perpetually among the phases of his extraordinary life, one that can befall only a true space-age Candide And what ingenuity the film's director and editor exercise m making Billy's shifts from period to period, place to place, both surprising and persuasive Matching shots tell us how one situation suggests another, cross-cutting shows the similarities and differences between two vaguely related events George Roy Hill, the canny director and Dede Allen, his brilliant editor, have (along with the scenarist) deployed the most exhilarating skill in dovetailing the pieces of this jagged, jiggling jigsaw puzzle into a teasing, jolting and ultimately compelling space-time continuum...

...Stephen Geller's adroit script sagely omits the dreary refrain that runs, or tap-dances, all through the book "So it goes " The camera and Dede Allen's editing take care of that point And the acting is-unusual for an American movie-flawless A total newcomer, Michael Sacks, plays Billy with dazed kindliness, a halting decency that never becomes coy or cretinous He is surrounded by an able band of actors, mostly New York-based and not yet overexposed Ron Leibman is again excellent as one of those psychopaths he can make almost endearing, and Eugene Roche plays that lovable nonentity Derby with a gallant simplicity that is very touching I would like to mention all, but can only single out one more talented novice, Valerie Perrine, who looks burstingly right as Montana, and can turn benightedness into an added sensual treat...

...Slaughterhouse-Five is a film of finely-wrought precisions some crazy, some sane, some heartwarming, some heartbreaking There is horror in it and laughter, and both, for better or worse, are double-bottomed The mad drive of Billy's fat wife Valencia to the hospital where he may be dying is funny but results in her death-whereas he survives, a little madder perhaps yet happier Valencia, poor thing, is a bit of a monster, but such a well-meaning one 1 Everything is so desparately relative on this Earth where people actually believe in free will that one must escape to a realm of physical and metaphysical absolutes If Tralfamadore didn't exist, it would have to be invented...

...In the first instance, the point is ironic Two very different elections (even the sound track turns antithetical thunderous applause in Ilium, the sound of scarcely more than one hand clapping m the POW camp) are revealed to be equally meaningless In the second case, one ascent leads to bliss and, ultimately, heaven on Tralfamadore, the other climb abuts on burning disaster, hell on earth Still, heaven and hell -together they are this life The point is brilliantly made, but the demonstration is a mite too ruthlessly geometrical...

...To bring out the innocence and poignancy of these doomed young countenances and antique cityscapes, Miroslav Ondricek, the fine Czech cinematographer, virtually surpasses himself Whether it is a populous bridge across the Elbe that looms slate-gray against an off-white winter sky, or whether the haze-wrapped steeples of Dresden file past the GIs arriving by train, the fine gauze around those baroque beauties prefiguring a shroud, or whether a wilderness of snow or a fiery inferno has to be evoked in monomaniacal white or red-Ondricek's camera is equal to all tasks It manages to extract the visual, coloristic essences of things without calling undue attention to itself, and subdued expertise is mastery indeed...

...Sometimes the cross-cutting is almost too studiedly dazzling for its own good Derby's acceptance of the dubious honor of becoming the American POWs' group leader is cross-cut with Billy's accession to the presidency of the Ilium (1 e, Troy, N Y ) Lions' Club When Billy carries his faithful old dog up the stairs toward the privacy of a bedroom forever free of Valencia's gross presence, this is cross-cut with the survivors' climbing from their dark shelter into the still blazing rums of a sumptuous, historic city...

...On Screen IN PRAISE OF THE WELL-MADE FILM BY JOHN SIMON Just as there exists a genie called "the well-made play," there ought to be one called "the well-made film" This would mean a movie not quite deep, searching or imaginative enough to be a work of art, but endowed with sufficient inventiveness, craftsmanship and artistry to make it an authentic, enjoyable experience It might even contain some food for thought-a thought sandwich, let's say, rather than a full-course meal High among such movies I would rank Slaughterhouse-Five, a neat, amiable tragicomedy cleverly and conscientiously crafted, and giving you the feeling of getting your time's, money's and intelligence's worth...

...I have just enough space left for a few words about films that do not deserve reviews, only warnings The Aich is a well-meaning but inadvertently pretentious and deadly dull view of 17th-century China by a young Chinese-American woman, Shu Shuen, who was clearly influenced by Mizoguchi (himself a frequent bore) into making one of those minimalist films m which maniacal subtlety subtilizes itself out of existence Even more irritating is Joseph Anthony's Tomorrow, based on a minor story by Faulkner turned into a disastrous play and then screenplay by Horton Foote This is inept faux-naif maundering, simple people are viewed as utter angelic bores-a derogation no less insulting for purporting to be a tribute...