Take One (Mar-Apr 1973)

the only Siegel actor. The film is decidely non-American in locales, cast and conception. Only the villain, Vernon, is a North American actor (Canadian, in fact). Siegel has traveled back to Europe, where he spent his early manhood, to reassess his concern over emotion and control. The assessment is much more human though no less violent. Indeed, Tarrant kills, but it is with a tire iron anda machine gun at close range instead of with silencer-mounted pistols or the world’s most powerful hand gun. Death is personal and one gets blood on one’s hands. Stuart M. Kaminsky FRANKENSTEIN A Bryanston -Pictures release of a Carlo Ponti production. Director and Screenplay: Paul Morrissey. Photography: Luigi Kuveiller. Editors: Franca Silvi and Jed Johnson. Cast: Joe Dallesandro, Monique Van Vooren, Udo Kier, Srdjan Zelenovic, Delila deLazzaro, Arno Juerging. Colour and Spacevision (3-D). 95 mins. Michael Goodwin, Take One Associate Editor, is also Film Critic for San Francisco's City magazine. Paul Morrissey’s Frankenstein is a horror. | mean a real horror — it'll drive you from the theater screaming. And not because of the subject matter, but because of -Morrissey’s atrocious misuse of the 3-D process. As a film, Frankenstein is of practically no interest — all-‘the elements that used to make Warhol’s films exciting are long gone. But as the first major 3-D film in a while (and in a new 3-D process, as well) it offers an opportunity to talk about 3-D. Three-dimensional movies are relatively easy to make. All you need to do is to shoot two pictures, separated in approximately the same perspective as eyeseparation, and then project them so each eye sees only the appropriate picture: right eye sees right camera image, left eye sees left camera image. There are several systems to make sure each eye sees the correct image — red and green filters, polarizing filters — but they all require that you wear glasses. There doesn’t seem to be any way around the glasses — at least not until holography is perfected to the point where holographic cinematography is possible. Whatever the system involved (red/ green or polaroid), shooting and/or projecting 3-D used to be an awkward and complicated process. You needed two cameras to shoot it, and two projectors to show it — and at both stages you needed a physical interlock system to make sure the cameras and/or projectors were perfectly synchronized. Since most theaters only had two projectors, you couldn’t make change-overs between reels. (Regular movies are released on five or six 20-minute reels. When reel one ends on projector one, reel two is started ‘on projector two, and so on). Consequently, the first polaroid 3-D films were released on gigantic 35mm reels, big enough to hold an entire feature on one reel — well, actually two reels, one for each eye. 28 The system was such a pain in the ass that it quickly fell into disuse. 3-D disappeared for 20 years, until someone came up with a_ simplified, single-projector system that meant you could show the film in any theater with minimal newsystem installation cost and reduced projection hassle. A porno film, The Stewardesses, was the first trial of the new system; Morrissey’s Frankenstein is, as far as | know, the first major film to use it. In the new (“Spacevision”’) process, both paired images .are printed on a single strip of 35mm film, so you don’t need an interlock system, and you can make normal change-overs. The images are in wide screen ‘Scope ratio, but printed in the TechniScope format — i.€., two sprocket-holes high, full 35mm width. Since a normal 35mm projector pulls down four sprocket holes every time the pull-down claw (or “intermittant”) operates (a normal 35mm frame is four sprocket holes), the system is completely compatible with existing projectors. All you have to do is fit a prism attachment to separate the stacked TechniScope images in each frame, and send them through different projection lenses (each appropriately polarized). There are some advantages and some drawbacks to the system. Aside from the obvious advantage of compatibility, there’s no inter-projector jiggle. The -drawbacks are that the frames are smaller than standard 35, requiring greater magnification and hence producing grainier images with inferior color saturation. Also, with only one projector the image tends to be darker than one would like. Nonetheless, it’s a perfectly .workable system — and one with great potential. But it still needs to be shot correctly and projected properly, and Morrissey has really screwed up the shooting. Because our eyes are fairly close together, the paired images we normally interpret as “depth” are nearly identical — the degree of horizontal displacement is very slight. The closer we are to something, the greater the horizontal displacement; at extreme close-up, in fact, our eyes must “cross” to bring the images together. In a 3-D picture, you make an image “come out of the screen” (i.€., approach the viewer) .by increasing the horizontal displacement of ‘the images. To a certain extent this can be a novel technique, but there is a limit to the degree of separation the brain will accept. If the separation is too great, the brain gives up and sees two flat images. Also, it gets a headache. The first 3-D films were very cautious in using “out of the screen” technique. Apparently, Morrissey decided to be a smart-ass and shove everything out of the screen. He uses giant close-ups, extreme depth differential, and all the shock devices he can muster — and in the process, he pushes the system far beyond its Capabilities. The first time | saw the film | sat about halfway between the screen and the back of the theater, and | could not integrate fully half of the -shots into a coherent 3-D image. The separation was just too great, and | was rewarded with a splitting headache for my efforts. Out of curiosity | went back to a subsequent screening, and sat in the very last row. From this distance, more of the shots were ‘“seeable,” but there were still far too many that would not integrate. In addition, | found that | had to make extreme ocular adjustment whenever the film cut from a close-up to a medium shot — causing me to miss the first ten seconds or so of many shots. The headache wasn’t quite as bad from the back of the theater, but it was no picnic either. What of the film then? Well, | don’t know if it’s really fair to review a film seen under-such conditions; it could have been Citizen Kane, and I|’d have probably hated it. Nonetheless, | have to say something about the film, so | will. It seems to:me that Morrissey has been striving for mediocrity for some years now; he has finally achieved it. None of the outrageous humor or camp psychodrama that distinguished the great Warhol films is left. The characters are neither themselves nor valid literary.constructs; they inhabit a gray middle-ground from where they can neither offend nor amuse. The cinematic technique is Hollywood-competent, the script is situation-comedy-dull, and the actors are just. plain silly. Warhol and Morrissey badly need the great personalities of the early films — the Vivas, the Mario Montez’s, the Taylor Meads. But these people will no longer work for Warhol/ Morrissey . because they were treated so badly when they did participate. (The kind of sensibility that’s responsible is all-too-apparent in a truly nasty moment in Frankenstein: Joe greets a fat, ugly whore with an off-hand “Hi, Viva.” Now that’s low.) So there it is: the 3-D is a drag, the film is a bore, and Frankenstein is solidly in the running for the worst movie in recent memory. Attend at your peril; you’ve been warned. Michael Goodwin MAHLER Directed and written. by Ken Russell. Producer: Roy Baird. Photographer: Dick Bush. Editor: Michael Bradsell. Music conducted by Bernhard Haitink. Art Director: lan Whittaker. Cast: Robert Powell, Georgina Hale, Lee Montague, Gary Rich, Ronald Pickup, David Collings, Miriam Karlin, Antonia Ellis, Richard Morant, Rosalie Crutchley, Andrew Faulds, George Coulouris, Benny Lee. 115 minutes. The common criticism of Ken Russell’s films is that they are one long ego-trip. Of course they are; if they weren't, they wouldn't be so interesting. Like, in their different ways, Welles, Fellini and Sternberg — the three filmmakers with whom he can be most readily compared — Russell is relentlessly autobiographical, but with an obvious difference. He films other people’s biographies in order to tell us about himself. What