Take One (Mar-Apr 1973)

Caine with what is probably his best role to date. While other young British directors were either reworking the traditional semi-documentary materials (Barney Platts-Mills, for example), or investigating private expressionistic visions (Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell), Hodges — almost alone — was developing something like a British New Wave, informed by a love of the Hollywood genre films of the past and colored by the kind of ironic intelligence that connotes the sixties and seventies. Get Carter was followed immediately by another film with Caine, Pulp, also a private-eye film, but this time with real Hollywood actors as well (Mickey Rooney, Lizabeth Scott, Lionel Stander). The sense of ironic distantiation was even greater with Pulp since Hodges added an extra factor to the narrative equation in his second film: the hero of Pulp may be the author of the story as well as its protagonist. Get Carter was a lot simpler and, | think, more effective: but there are those who prefer the multi-leveled Pulp to its more straightforward predecessor. Seen in this context, The Terminal Man deserves much closer study than we might, for itself, accord it. Obviously, it continues Hodges’ singleminded _ investigation of the old genres and, while we might be happy to see him move on to a new genre, it would be pleasanter to report that he had found as telling and ironic a referent for sci-fi as Pulp and Get Carter proved to be for their respective genres. He didn’t. Terminal Man is a much more private film. The parody is much more acute here, much more slippery. And since it is also more demanding, audiences are going to be left cold by Terminal Man unless they bring a lot to it. The lovesongs to machines, the hubris of the mad scientist, the absurdity of the figure of the scientist himself, the relationships with women, the theme of control — and se/f-control, the Frankenstein plot — all of these are cardinal elements of science-fiction movies and all of them are parodied in one way or another in Terminal Man. But the parody depends more on Hodges’ exaggerated visual style than on keys in the plot or dialogue and that makes this third exercise in the art of genres much more demanding. The film is composed almost entirely of blacks and greys (eventhough it is in color, of course). Camera angles are purposely strained and close-ups predominate. The cutting of the film is equally intentionally jagged. And all of this stylization makes the film highly atmospheric and moody: precisely the kind of filmmaking that always has tough going in the American commercial market. Hodges has cut the phony drama from his sci-fi movie: we see this monster film from the point of view of the monster, not the ravaged city and that makes of it much less a struggle for survival against 32 the terrors of the unknown than a bittersweet accomodation with a foregone fate. Harry doesn't even get the pity that we once gave King Kong: his fate is too mechanical, too relentless to be pitied. Considering the mythic roots of the film and its dependence on the strength of its visual style for its power, The Terminal Man is a perfect candidate for structuralist criticism. Mike Hodges may have overreached himself as far as American audiences are concerned, but this film is going to be around for a long time and film estheticians — at least — are going to take it seriously. James Monaco CHINATOWN A Paramount release of a Robert Evans production. Director: Roman Polanski. Screenplay: Robert Towne. Director of Photography: John A. Alonzo. Music: Jerry Goldsmith. Editor: Sam O’Steen. Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman. 130 mins. Rebounding from the chaotic failed farce of What?, Roman Polanski has landed in Chinatown, a puzzling and enormously rewarding film that seems guaranteed to become his first major commercial success since Rosemary’s Baby. Chinatown is a pre-WWiII private eye story with the most rudimentary of blueprints: a sleuth who specializes in marital affairs takes on what appears to be a routine assignment and lands head first in a maze of situations that takes on larger and more mystifying implications. But like the heroine of his film, played by Faye Dunaway, Polanski takes his drink with a twist of lime in place of the usual lemon, making this more than another nostalgic Sting-er. The artifacts are all present: the period cars, costumes, furniture and cigarette Cases, but Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne are concerned with more than memorabilia. Even the stark black and white titles and moody Hollywood music, while in one sense an hommage to the traditions of film noir, become at least partially ironic in view of what Polanski and Towne have done to the conventions of the genre. No film noir heroine, no matter how evil, had a child by her own father and ended up with an eye plugged out of her head in living color. Like The Long Goodbye, to which this film is inevitably being compared, Chinatown is about the movies, about Los Angeles and how it arrived at its present condition (the script deals with a water comPany’s conspiracy to buy up land in the Surrounding area and incorporate into L.A.). Polanski lacks Altman’s graceful lunacy, but he has an outsider’s skeptical eye and a wicked left hook. J.J. Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson, is obsessed with Chinatown, where he worked, before becoming shamus, as a cop assisting the D.A. Jokes about Chinamen, references to the unknown lurking dangers of the locale and a veiled allusion to something that went very wrong there for Gittes are scattered throughout the film, leading unavoidably to the climax on those exotic streets that Gittes thought he had escaped. The screenplay is so meticulously constructed, and Polanski’s approach so direct and unCluttered that Chinatown is immediately accessible as a familiar movie formula (and Nicholson’s relationship with Dunaway as his client is a welcome restoration of male-female interplay into an action framework). Nonetheless, Polanski has seen and experienced too much to stick to the standard components. When he intrudes as an actor to slice a knife through Nicholson’s nose, Polanski makes sure that we realize he is not playing games, that desperate, ambitious people are capable of unimagined horror. A few words about Nicholson: as should have been clear for some time, he’s the best we've got. Trained not on the stage like Pacino, Redford, Gould... or on T.V. but at A.I.P., Nicholson is one of the movie-punk survivors. From the twitchy, nervous kid of Cry Baby Killer (1958) through Chinatown, he has developed into an actor who is intent on creating memorable characters and not in merely extending his star status. In Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge, The Last Detail, he has taken bold chances and made most of them work. He plays much of Chinatown with a hideous white bandage hiding a good portion of his face, and with his hair slicked down he appears consummately unheroic. That he brings J.J. Gittes out of the shadows of Marlowe and Spade is a testament to a rare combination of leading-man charm and character-actor ingenuity. Chinatown, however, is not a one-man show. Dunaway is more effective than she’s been since Bonnie and Clyde and the supporting cast is excellent. Towne’s dialogue is smart and unpretentious, and any film that includes “Il Can't Get Started” in its score has a point in its favor from the kick-off gun. Above all, Chinatown’s impact is the work of director Polanski who, guided by a tight foundation and a serviceable genre, has pulled together a film that gains strength from its restraint and yet retains its ability to surprise. Every so often a director whom you thought you had pegged and locked into a critical compartment will create a film that throws you offbalance. The predictable Polanski elements: the young woman in peril, sustained shocking violence and macabre humor, have been pushed to the periphery of Chinatown, with encouraging results. What comes to the fore is a confident hand with actors (John Huston is permitted to ham it up a bit), sure-footed plot development and less bludgeoning violence and comedy. Chinatown, at once a throwback tribute and an original variation on a form, puts Roman Polanski back on the track and suggests a more complex talent than has been evident for quite some time. Mitchell S. Cohen