FILM

...Prominent among them are Jaroslaw (Piotr Garlicki), an idealistic young assistant professor, and his mentor, Jakub (Zbigniew Zapasiewicz), a tenured associate professor, who is a master of deceptive expediency (camouflage) and manipulation...

...But Gallipoli, while militarily accurate, is not a documentary recreation...

...Good performance by Albert Finney in the leading role...

...No reviews were published...

...The students discover to their great dismay that the jury for the research competition is rigged...

...And in an increasingly internationalized industry, the film further distinguishes itself through its exploitation of indigenous historical and cultural material...

...GALLIPOLI Gallipoli is not, as a press release declares, "the most remarkable film yet to come out of the Australian film renaissance," but in style and content it does exemplify the characteristics that have gained increasing world attention for Australian movies...

...The director has called the film "the story of two young men on the road to adventure, how they crossed the continents and great oceans, climbed the pyramids and walked through the ancient sands of Egypt and the deserts of the outback, to their appointment with destiny at Gallipoli...

...There are other special dividends, including an amazing underwater sequence of nude soldiers (who had taken to the surf to wash off the dirt of the trenches) diving down to escape the shells of an artillery bombardment...

...But because the film deliberately limits its perspective—largely to that of its naive protagonists—it has neither the historical vision nor the impact of that most masterful of World War I movies, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory...

...two Aussie divisions fought there with great courage while incurring terrible losses...

...Nor do the conditions that the film depicts pertain solely to academic politics...

...By the end of the film, however, Jakub's waggish cynicism has been revealed as mere veneer for moral bankruptcy and self-loathing...

...Not long after the opening, the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party published a criticism of the film (which no doubt contributed to its popularity...

...The statement, as paraphrased by the film's writer-director, Krzysztof Zanussi, declared that "there was no such university [as that portrayed in the movie], no such professors, and no such relationships...

...Finally, they are landed on the coast of Gallipoli, where an officer orders their regiment to mount a hopeless bayonet charge against well-fortified Turkish positions...

...Rather than attempt a broad depiction of the campaign, Weir and scriptwriter David Williamson have chosen to narrow and personalize their focus...

...And while the film gives hints of anti-colonial feelings among Australians, this theme (more strongly stated in Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant) remains largely undeveloped...

...she's a conservative...

...the characters and their personal histories are "entirely fictitious...

...Blow Out A bit of Blow Up, a bit of Psycho, Vertigo, Chappaquiddick, Watergate, what have you...

...And there is an extraordinarily moving scene in which the regimental commander is depicted in his tent on the eve of battle, as though in prayer, while the hymn-like strains of the great tenor-baritone duet from The Pearl Fishers ("Del tempio al limitar") rise from his phonograph...

...Although the moral-political conflict between Jaroslaw and Jakub is at the forefront of Camouflage, the film also represents the oppressive aspects of all relationships within the academic hierarchy: among students, junior faculty, senior faculty, and administration...

...Like most other Australian films released here in the last few yers, Gallipoli is decidedly pre-modernist in spirit and has been endowed with a conventional, linear narrative...

...Significantly, one need not be a Pole (or an academic) to appreciate this work...

...guileless protagonists are caught up...

...Although a couple of newspaper reports are read on the screen, these don't suffice to provide much understanding of the historical events in which Gallipolis...

...But in some respects, Gallipoli leaves one wishing for more...

...M Hits and Misses Honky Tonk Freeway Rambunctious Americana: silly, funny, irreverent, rather endearing.Directed by Englishman John Schlesinger, with surprising sympathy for the zaniness of American pop culture...

...The photography, typicially, is crisp, bright, and colorful...

...There was no announcement of the release and no advertising...

...The two "mates" almost die crossing the deserts of western Australia on their way to the recruitment station in Perth...

...The soldiers' shenanigans in the Egyptian sequence verge on silliness, recalling, somewhat inappropriately, the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road movies...

...It was completed in 1976, but because Polish authorities considered it controversial (and possibly anti-socialist), it was not permitted to be shown until the following year...

...This complex character is subtly portrayed by Zapasiewicz, who has emerged in recent films of Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda as Poland's foremost male film actor...

...The two young men are Archy (Mark Lee) and Frank (Mel Gibson), sprinters who enlist to fight out of a sense of comradeship and because, as Archy later puts it, "there's a feeling that we're all involved in an adventure that's somehow larger than life...

...Jaroslaw carries out orders he considers morally repugnant...

...Expressive use is made of the distinctive open landscapes of the Australian outback...

...I'd recommend Camouflage to all Americans seeking to understand the roots of current Polish dissidence, and the adherence of Polish youth and intellectuals to the cause of Solidarity...

...But news of the film spread rapidly by word of mouth, Poles waited in long lines to see it, and it played to packed houses for six months...

...But this film provides disappointingly little to think about...

...Much of the film's effectiveness is achieved by playing off images of simple physical pleasure (within the pastoral setting, which only the students seem able to enjoy) against scenes in which language is abused and becomes—ironically, since the film focuses on linguistics—an instrument of oppression...

...They are shipped out for training in Egypt, and have an opportunity to cavort for a while in the shadows of the pyramids...

...Gallipoli figures prominently in the modern memory of Australians...

...Nonetheless, Gallipoli is an engaging movie, and it does criticize, at least by implication, the notion of modern warfare as enriching adventure...

...Stunning use is made of locations in Manhattan and in devastated areas of the South Bronx...

...In justification of his decision, the eighteen-year-old Archy reminds his concerned uncle that the latter had gone to sea when he was even younger, and several times nearly lost his life...

...Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill) again proves himself to be one of the most stylish contemporary filmmakers, but one wishes he would collaborate with a better screenwriter than Brian De Palma...

...Faculty members are a generally conservative lot, more concerned with furthering their careers than with the pursuit of truth or excellence...

...The title refers to the peninsula of European Turkey where, in one of the most costly campaigns of World War I, the Turks withstood an allied invasion and inflicted heavy casualties...

...The film, conceived and directed by Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave), is based on the official Australian history of the campaign and on The Broken Years (compiled by Bill Gammage), a collection of excerpts from soldiers' diaries and letters...

...Nonetheless, these two countries have produced, in recent years, a remarkable number of the most satisfying films...

...Two new works, each representative of the strengths (and some of the weaknesses) of current Polish and Australian filmmaking, will be making their way around the United States this fall...

...He does not understand, however, when his uncle explains that while he'd taken certain risks, "war's different...

...The principal characters are rather simplistically drawn, and the acting in these roles is merely adequate...

...Jaroslaw detests academic politics, but is torn between his sympathy for students' grievances and his desire to maintain a position that will enable him to pursue his own research...

...Interesting use of John Travolta as a character who is not simply a mass of inchoate feelings, but a young man who lives by his wits...

...Camouflage, which depicts the insidious workings of academic politics in Poland, is not exactly a new film...

...The sets and costumes are exquisite period recreations...

...The film lacks something in narrative coherence, but is nonetheless affecting, and especially strong in visual imagination...

...Delightful performances by some newcomers, as well as by such familiar troupers as Jessica Tandy and Hume Crony n. First Monday in October A genial comedy-drama with the most for-tuituous film plot of the year: The first woman is appointed to the Supreme Court—and (guess what...

...Jakub fancies himself a realist—a close observer of nature who has come to the Darwinian conclusion that survival belongs to the fittest...

...The authors, director, and Jill Clay-burgh (the Justice) conspire to make this moral majoritarian quite appealing, but best of all is a scene-stealing performance by Walter Matthau as "The Great Dissenter," a liberal Justice modeled loosely on William O. Douglas (with a little bit of Hugo Black and Groucho Marx thrown in for good measure...

...And just about everyone toadies to the school's pompous, overbearing rector...

...However much Polish institutions may differ from ours, the film's portrayal of the exercise of power and the subtle pressures for conformity is by no means unrepresentative of conditions in American universities...

...The university setting for Camouflage is a bucolic summer campus where advanced students are competing for research prizes in linguistics...

...Wolfen A crime thriller which really deals with the decline of western civilization...

...Jakub, following the path of political expediency, supports a mediocre research paper for the competition's first prize...