Canadian Film Weekly (May 1, 1970)

Page 2 CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY May 1, 1970 Director Milos Forman (Loves Of A Blonde) made The Fireman’s Ball, a parody-fable of Slavic bureaucracy, and it was nominated as one of the best foreign films in the 1968 Academy Awards contest. By far one of the funniest motion pictures I have seen (others being the Marx Brothers’ A Night At The Opera and Jacques Tati’s Playtime, recently acquired by the Walter Reade Organization and Continental Films), it concerns a group of firemen who stage a ball in honour of their beloved, retiring captain — they plan to present him with a gold-plated fireman’s hatchet. There is so much ridicule and absurdity in the movie —a house burns to the ground as the insufficient firemen throw futile handfuls of snow on it and move closer to the flames in order to keep themselves comfortably warm, a beauty contest turns into chaos when all of the contestants are ‘losers’, all the contest prizes are stolen — that the whole affair becomes not only a humorous allegory, but also a very successful comedy depicting the life styles of Eastern Europe and a multilevelled comment on Czechoslovakian political history. It is unfortunate that The Fireman’s Ball has not received the exhibition it fully deserves, as I am quite sure that there is a good-sized audience to support it. There is definitely -a number of small cinemas dealing in the so-called ‘art house’ trade that would prosper by the screening of this clever little film. The Fireman’s Ball is distributed in Canada by Cine-Art in Montreal _... Abbie Hoffman has announced that he and the other defendants in the Chicago conspiracy trial will attempt to offset their legal expenses by making their own feature film of the trial. He said that the movie will be entitled The Seditious Movie (“because we're not allowed to make seditious speeches’). It will star all seven defendants, their lawyers, and a number of ‘sympathetic’ celebrities. Hoffman revealed that he had sent a telegram to Judge Julius Hoffman offering the judge $100,000 to play himself in the film. The Seditious Seven will be directed by Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause) and will be filmed this spring in New York on a studio set that will be an exact replica of the Chicago courtroom where the actual trial took place . . Vilgot Sjoman’s I Am Curious, Blue has been cleared by the Quebec censor board and Montreal is consequently enjoying the North American premiere engagement of the second part of this celebrated Swedish film. As no one here has seen the film, the only way to inform interested parties on its content/quality is to view from the topp By GARY TOPP quote from the only reports available — those from two -Montreal newspapers. From the Montreal Star, “Blue has fewer and less explicit sex scenes than its predecessor, yet, paradoxically, it is more concerned with sex. Like Yellow, it uses a combination of fact, fiction, satire and fantasy, in styles borrowed largely from French practitioners of the cinema verité technique, to define and criticize the quality of life in contemporary Sweden. Sjoman once again sends his kooky, disorganized, opinionated and somewhat porky heroine, Lena, into the streets of Stockholm to gather opinions on politics, religion and sex. Blue is not the ‘son’ of I Am Curious and it is not, as some people might imagine, composed of footage left over when the first film was finished.” The Gazette described I Am Curious, Blue as a “pleasant surprise. Sjoman’s purpose here is clearly to prod his countrymen into life, as he seems to believe Sweden is suffocating in smug self-satisfaction. And he does it gently, by showing his audience what they look like en repose, on the job, in the streets, anywhere at all. Using the same cast, Sjoman brightens their outlooks and openly mocks the seriousness of their earlier roles. The story slides from script to documentary, to fantasy without a hitch, painlessly shifting the viewer’s point of view, making I Am Curious, Blue an amusing, intelligent cinematic exercize. P.S.: For those seeking skin and sex, you'll find them — but in small, discreet doses only.” The distributor is unknown . . . Overheard at a recent screening — “Let’s see it through once more and then ban it.” . . . Film-sellers tend to dislike or distrust a product until the audience gives its approval (in cash). Lack of immediate ‘boxoffice’ seldom killed a good film, but sometimes it has killed a good Our Business (Continued from Page 1) have seen articles of this type appear in newspapers, some of which attempt from time to time to censor our advertising. This is not written in censure of such newspapers, because their purpose is to accurately report what is happening in the world today. Motion pictures have always been a reflection of life, and while we do not necessarily condone ~ example director As the cinema’s greatest audience is those between 16 and 25, the cinema should consequently be one of the greatest inspirers of the coming generation. The cinema, therefore, has the gravest responsibility as to the way it ‘inspires’ this generation. I doubt that there could ever be enough films dealing with their problems, but these problems, which are indeed extremely vital, should not be boiled down to the sexy, violent side of things. They should not be boiled down for the sake of box-office alone. There is no end to what films could do— or be. Films could help people listen in a new way to all the new things happening; to all the old things still not dead. Films could help us open our eyes a little more, so that we could see better and hear better our neighbors in the next house or our neighbors in the country nearby or far away. Films could help us more in the search for knowledge about ourselves. Films could be more concerned about how to explore the world than how to explode it. There is definitely no end to what films could do—or be. That’s what makes the film business so discouraging and yet, so very encouraging . . . I find it quite sick that certain people try to exploit an individual’s death—a_ recent being the revival of Gypsy and the name of the late Gypsy Rose Lee appearing in the catch-line of the newspaper ads “The old-fashioned censor board, which viewed films prior to exhibition and decided whether they could be shown, is, for all practical purposes, dead,’ Miss Barbara Scott, deputy attorney in charge of censorship matters for the Motion Picture Association of America, told more than 200 lawyers at a dinner meeting of the Los Angeles Copyright Society. everything which may appear on our screens, neither should we adopt a Victorian or Pollyanna attitude. It follows, therefore, that we should not permit ourselves to become scapegoats for narrowminded people who choose to walk through life with blinkers. Life entails living and the way it is lived today is different from last year or the year before. Our business is to sell motion picture entertainment and to cater to that segment of the public which will buy it. We need make no apologies. olooking Alaa | Judy Geeson has been signed for a starring role in 10 Rillington Place, the Filmways production for — Columbia Pictures starring Richard — Attenborough. Based on the book by Ludovic Kennedy, “10 Rillington Place” will be directed by Richard Fleischer. Leslie Linder and Basil Appleby will produce the story of mass murderer John Christie. — Miss Geeson will play the wife of Timothy Evans, the man who was wrongly convicted and executed for the murders committed by Christie. * * * : The Priest's Wife, starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, has gone into production for Warner Bros. release on location in Padua, Italy, a town associated with the birth of the Renaissance. The Champion Fi!m, produced by Carlo Ponti, comes to grips with a crucial Church problem of today: should priests be allowed to marry? The Priest’s Wife, a story of a modern rock singer and a priest who fall in love, dramatizes the Church’s conflict, “in a sensitive, humanistic way,” according to producer Ponti. * * * The Newcomers, the Walt Disney feature shot in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, will be released as The Wild Country. Steve Forrest, Vera Miles, Jack Elam and Ronny Howard star in the Buena Vista | release directed by Robert Totten. © * * Silvana Mangano has _ been signed to appear with Dirk Bogarde and 14-year-old Bjorn Andresen in Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti’s motion picture production for Warner Bros. Miss Mangano, wife of film producer Dino di Laurentiis will portray the mother of young Andresen. ERM Vol. 35, No. 16 May 1, 1970 Editor: ED HOCURA CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY 175 Bloor St. East, Toronto 5, Ont. Published by Motion Picture Institute of Canada, 175 Bloor St. East, Toronto 5, Ontario Canada * Phone 924-1757 Price $7.50 per year