Canadian Film Weekly (Mar 13, 1970)

Page 4 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY movie reviews By GARY TOPP GEORGE C. SCOTT Patton Patton begins with the famous Second World War tank commander’s monologue to his troops, urging them to be inconquerable savages . . “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” General George S. Patton was a rebel, long before it became fashionable. He rebelled against the establishment and he rebelled against its ideas of warfare. Twentieth Century-Fox’s Patton is a highly ambitious portrait of the legendary Second World War egomaniac who became known as Old Blood And Guts — “his guts, our blood!” He bullied his soldiers, he loved war to the point of madness (“All of my life I’ve wanted to lead a lot of men in a desperate battle. Now I’m going to do that.’’), he hated yellow-bellied soldiers who may or may not be afraid of war, he kissed his wounded soldiers on the battlefield, and he demanded victory and good weather from God. There are a few loose ends to this ‘‘salute to a rebel’, but when a film is as virtuous as this one is, the short-comings don’t seem to matter in the least. Patton is visually elegant throughout its entire three hours and the screenplay, by the very talented director/writer, Francis Ford Coppola (You’re A Big Boy Now, The Rain People) and Edmund H. North, is written with such acuteness and skill that it could carry the movie by itself, had the movie been dreadful. Franklin Schaffner’s (The War Lord, Planet of the Apes) exciting direction is noticeable throughout the film, but most impressive were the ‘bloody’ engrossing battle scenes, beautifully staged, and George C. Scott’s intense performance of Patton, the artist — his art being that of brutal warfare. His portrayal has captured the pain, romance and humour of the individual dedicated to military victory. Patton is a vision of one of history’s most spectacular men whose unruly and rebellious personality brought him disfavour and loss of command. The movie is more about anti-war than of war itself, a movie demonstrating all of the frantic insanity of attempting to make the other poor “bastard” die for his country. Curiously, within weeks of his final dismissal, Patton died of injuries received in a peacetime automobile accident. Two days after his death, the New York Times praised the war (anti-) hero . . . “Long before the war ended, Patton was a legend. Spectacular, swaggering, pistol packing, deeply religious and violently profane, easily moved to anger because he was first of all a fighting man, easily moved to tears because underneath all his mannered irascibility he had a kind heart, he was a strange combination of fire and ice”. The film, and especially George C. Scott have captured all of this! Spee Coming Apart Joe Glazer is a married psychiatrist who decides to keep a film diary. He borrows an apartment and sets up a hidden camera, disguised as an art object, in such a way that for most of the time the frame is composed of a couch and a mirror behind it, the mirror reflecting the action in the room. Joe is visited by a cross-secton of feminine life —a number of women who are former patients, mistresses and casual acquaintances. He lures them into the camera’s range so that he can study them and their relationships with him. His purpose is to see his life, to discover what he is like, to see his own behavior as viewed voyeuristically via the camera... “I am frightened and wonder to find myself here rather than there. For there is no reason why I should be here rather than there, now rather than then.” Milton Moses Ginsberg’s first film, Coming Apart, (distributed by Film Canada) is composed of a number of sequences, each containing a different camera set-up and each punctuated with either un/over exposed chunks of film, or with the unsteady camera movements resulting from the equipment’s change in position. I can’t think of enough praise for Coming Apart, an exciting motion picture which depicts one human being’s “coming apart”. As a psychiatrist, (although I don’t find that what he does for a living is of much importance) Joe, brilliantly played by one of America’s most important actors, Rip Torn, wonders whether or not his patients actually understand — the situation of their lives, even though their predicaments are so clear to him. This leads to his experiment — the recording of his own behavior to ‘“‘see the outside shape of my own consciousness as clearly as I see it in others, see my own being. Maybe I could come to terms with my own life. I can’t die without knowing myself.” More fascinating than the exceptionally acute performances of most of the cast, is the perfectly scripted choreography. Writer-director Ginsberg’s careful staging of the action at different positions from the camera is to me pure cinema. Ginsberg made his film in only 20 days with a remarkably low budget of $50,000. He explained that “it was carefully scripted and choreographed to the point where it was necessary to film each segment in its entirety. Because of the strenuous demands on the actors, we could do very few takes of each one.” The entre film has a spontaneous air to it. Sally Kirkland (the girl _who finally destroys Joe’s little world of reality, or perhaps fantasy) pointed out in an interview that they “really didn’t improvise very much. In fact, we worked so close to the script that when I was against a certain word, Milton insisted on my using it. I kept refusing but finally he got me so angry that it finally came out, from shere madness. His scripting was so accurate. I hope I can work with him again.” Coming Apart succeeds in projecting an honest picture of some very tortured characters. The entire crew, being totally involved in its work, projects the emotional truths exceptionally well. There are so many levels to the film that one could see it over and over again and still have so much to talk about. At Toronto’s St. Lawrence Centre, (left to right) Milton Moses Ginsberg, Rip Torn and Sally Kirkland held an open discussion with the audience following the showing of their movie, Coming Apart. Unfortunately, the whole event tended to become extremely farcical as the audience seemed only interested in stating how bored or unbored it was. Similar to the film, the director and his two stars handled themselves very well indeed. Nevertheless, the discussion turned out to be a failure and an insult to the intelligence of some people. (Photo by Keran Smiley) MARCH 13, 1970 ~ i a alent rtp NR Rip LR RN NR SIE pete yaad Pe Sa SS eS eae Calne ak eas