Canadian Film Weekly (Apr 10, 1970)

Page 2 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY April 10, 1970 All of Harold Robbins’ novels have become total financial successes and for this reason alone, the motion pictures based upon his books contain those very rare presold qualities that lead to boxoffice glory with mass audiences. _ The Adventurers, in paperback editions alone, sold approximately 20,000,000 copies, making it one of the biggest selling books in American publishing history and a natural for screen adaptation. Paramount’s movie version cost $12,000,000 and has a cast and crew representing 22 different nations. The sex/violence story, which is said to be a disguised biography of Dominican Republic jet-setter Porfirio Rubirosa (1902-1965), stars an international array of screen personalities such as Charles Aznavour, Candice Bergen, Ernest Borgnine, Olivia de Havilland, Anna Moffo and Leigh Taylor-Young and was directed by Lewis (Alfie, You Only Live Twice) Gilbert. Paramount last week announced that The Adventurers has already passed the $2,000,000 gross mark since its March 25 opening. Despite its very poor critical reaction, a good mixture of audience types have been attending the screenings, proving, perhaps once and for all, that the movie critics don’t make or break the motion picture business. Every once and a while, something like The Adventurers comes along to establish the fact that the public will make its voice heard and its wants made known, and to revive the old truism that nobody knows for certain exactly how audiences will react to any particular item of entertainment . . . Rolling Stone magazine, America’s foremost pop journal, recently reported that a filmed record of last year’s Rolling Stones’ concert which was accompanied by a knifing, stomping murder within the scream of the stage, has become one of 1970's hot film properties with Universal Pictures already weighing in with the highest bid-reportedly a higher than $1,000,000 guarantee. The Maysles Brothers (Salesman), the film company which had shot the Stones’ performance, had captured some remarkable footage — “no less than three cameras had caught the action, and one of them had the entire sequence, the face of the knifesman being clear” .. . If Flick It, the third film made this year with 50-per-cent backing from the Canadian Film Development Corporation (after Act Of The Heart and Explosion), aids this country’s motion picture industry, it will do so only by proving that low budget feature-length projects are very possible. Flick It (distributed by Astral Films) was finished in 19 days, or 21 days ahead of schedule, and was brought in for about $230,000 or $70,000 view Ttrom the topp By GARY TOPP under budget — a major feat first time out. The film is an updated version of the legendary Frankenstein theme and is set mostly on an unidentified North American campus (Toronto) complete with radicals, mind control via remote power, bigotry, sudden death, sex and drugs. I only wish the CFDC would take a close look at more of Canada’s film-makers, the ones who are making some of the most exciting experiments in this country’s arts scene but who are unfortunately remaining unrecognized . . . Local theatre, Cinecity, celebrated its third anniversary last Thursday by presenting three free showings of the beautiful rock documentary, Monterey Pop. Tickets were given to anyone presenting a flower to the ticket-taker, and believe me, the reaction was so great that the theatre could have converted itself into a florist shop, with no trouble at all. It was a fantastic birthday party, and it was good to see one theatre going out of its way to promote itself and its movies. When will exhibitors realize that newspaper ads alone will not attract the crowds? Samuel Z. Arkoff of the successful American International Pictures realizes this, “Now is the time for you to merchandise and exploit those pictures to their full advantage in your community. There is nothing so remarkable about that. You used to do it in the olden days. Some of you still do it. Just give it that same old creative, do-or-die spirit you give your snack-bar. Forget about TV, night-racing et cetera. Let’s not worry about everything and everybody else. Let’s not fight everyone’s battles” . . . And speaking of television, with more than 100 cinemas, it was found that in Moscow, many people went to the movie theatre after seeing a film on television. The reason, it is said, is that they enjoyed the audience participation with the big screen and full sound. The Russians like to discuss what they see and patrons are invited not only to stay for a question and answer session after a movie but to listen to a critic give comments on it... My friend remarked to me that seeing Warner Brothers’ Woodstock film cost her more than the entire weekend at the actual festival . . . Falstaff is one of Orson Welles’ better films, not without difficulties, but surely great and definitely Welles. He is certainly one of the most brilliant actors / directors in film history and he plays the title role of Falstaff as if he were born for it, not. purely because he has all of the exterior dimensions, but because he has the interior capacity. Unfortunately, the movie has had more than its share of troubles. When it was first shown at the Cannes Film Festival a few years ago, Bosley Crowther panned it in no uncertain terms (but Crowther panned Citizen Kane in its time, and we all know about Citizen Kane). The trouble with Crowther is that he has a tremendous influence on the New York film scene. Not only is he able to make or break any movie in New York, he can dictate to distributors what films they may or may not import. When he disliked Falstaff, nobody would dare touch it, even though it had received seyeral rave comments. Finally, some brave souls picked up the film and even changed the title to Chimes At Midnight in an attempt to confuse any of Crowther’s readers. Prima Films in Montreal is handling Falstaff and just a few weeks ago, Toronto’s Ontario Film Theatre screened it to a standing-roomonly crowd of over 500, turning away hundreds at the door. Ob-. viously, the film has great potential — the Film Theatre only advertised to its members. Falstaff deserves a commercial release and I’m quite positive that it would receive the support of every serious moviegoer — and there are a lot of those . Pretty still photographer doubles as extra in films | Doris Nieh, who doubled as freelance photographer for United Artists’ upcoming The Hawaiians and as an extra in a nude bath sequence with Charlton Heston, visited Toronto last week, one stop in her 22-city promotional tour for the film. The Hawaiians, which is based upon the second half of James A. Michener’s best-seller, Hawaii, stars Charlton Heston, Geraldine Page, John Philip Law and Alec McCowan. Miss Nieh was born on mainland China but fled to the U.S. with her parents in 1950. After graduating from the University of Iowa, majoring in journalism, she became a professional photographer. She has shot the stills for several motion pictures including Paper Lion (which she enjoyed most and which eventually incited in her a love for sports, especially football), Stagecoach, The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (Elke Sommers’ favourite topless shots), The Fall of The Roman Empire and Caprice (she was permitted to take pictures of everyone but Doris Day). At one point in her work, director Robert Wise noticed her on the sets of The Sand Pebbles. He asked her if she would consider playing a brief role as a Chinese prostitute. Miss Nieh reluctantly accepted the part, which she says at least earned her a dressing room. Although she doesn’t consider herself, or even wish to be an. actress per se, this very attractive photographer has managed to grab bit roles in Hang ’Em High and most recently, The Hawaiians. Having signed to photograph this film, she was again asked to double in brass. “When they told me the picture starred Charlton Heston, I said I would do anything. Even take a DORIS NIEH bath with him? Without my clothes? How else do you take a bath? I decided to go along with it. Almost anything for a story!” Now established as a Hollywood still photographer (freelance — “no company, just me!”’), Miss Nieh has become a shareholder in a new motion picture production company, Mako International Production Inc., which has plans for three low budget features. Although she does feel that there is still a place for the more lavish motion pictures, she is under the opinion that the trend today is definitely toward the less expensive production, and that this trend will no doubt aid the industry.