Take One (Jan 1979)

Driver, it operates according to two fast and disgusting rules: suspense is generated by an audience waiting for a woman to be torn apart by a maniac; and this act is “morally” prepared for—unconsciously sanctioned—by identifying her with illicit sex. Halloween follows this ritualistic pattern with devoted rigor, so that the teenage victim in 1963 gets stabbed right after making love with her boyfriend (a view through a mask that we share with the killer); Loomis “gets hers” on her way to a sexual rendezvous (after an erotic ass shot), while Soles and her boyfriend are each murdered after a happy session in bed—the latter skewered to a kitchen wall and contemplated curiously by the psycho in a powerfully prolonged and silhouetted tableau. There’s just as much a sense of nostalgic, loving design when Carpenter features clips from The Thing and Forbidden Planet on a Halloween TV horror show—both cunningly broadcast in their original ratios, which proves that he really honors what he plunders. The only question is, what is he (or are we) honoring in the MSSM, and what makes this morally superior to fondling Nazi war relics? Jonathan Rosenbaum This film trembles with a religious faith SO awesome even an atheist might pause. The legend of the Holy Grail has inspired such magnificent diverse work as Wagner’s “Parsifal” and Bresson’s Lancelot of the Lake. Eric Rohmer’s Perceval (based on an Arthurian romance written by twelfth century French poet Chrétien de Troyes) is, however, unique in its virtual elimination of an intermediary, modern sensibility between the artist and the myth. Rohmer is so attuned to the virtues this story celebrates and the spirit it embodies that he transforms a_ potential curiosity into a movie at once immediate and vital. His oneness with this material erases a distance of eight centuries. Rohmer has stated that from the outset his foremost concern was the presentation of de Troyes’ text in as straight-forward and unadorned a manner as possible. He did, however, translate the poem into modern verse so that its rhyme and meter would fall more easily on contemporary ears. The result of Rohmer’s labor of love is a film that evokes the spirit of the Middle Ages in every frame. Perceval unfolds like a Book of Hours miraculously sprung to life. The physical movements and positioning of the actors even resemble those still life figures from engravings of the period, with their tilting bodies, inclined heads, and arms and hands extended in gestures of supplication. Perceval’s misadventures have one of King Arthur's more ingenuous knights set against the landscape of painted sets, artificial props and storybook colors. Rohmer and his gifted collaborators—art director Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko, costume designer Jacques Schmidt and cinematographer Nestor Almendros—have constructed a self-enclosed two-dimensional world completely within the studio. When Perceval (Fabrice Luchini) first rides out ona real horse, a humorous disproportion is set up between the size of the actor and animal, and the dimensions of their surroundings—the golden manor house from which they emerge, the pale blue sky, and the painted carpet of green grass on which the steed prances. The forest that becomes a recurring motif during the knight's travels is a bizarre collection of silver-green metal trees, their leaves and branches forming all sorts of marvelous Baroque patterns. Rohmer has created a glorious paradox Fabrice Luchini as Perceval —a highly stylized theater piece which is conceived totally in cinematic terms. The self-imposed restrictions have actually liberated his imagination in a way that expands the potential of the medium. Like such great Renoir “theater” films as The Golden Coach, and French Cancan, Perceval plays with the contradictory impulses of theater and cinema. Its gleeful juggling of their similarities and differences modifies any preconceived definitions of either. This movie revels in its theatricality. Nearly half the verse is sung to music that Guy Robert has culled from themes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The very opening shot introduces four of the chorus who will sing and narrate the text, and like the cast of a large stage special, double when necessary in various supporting roles. When these medieval minstrels sing about birds twittering, the camera pans‘right to incorporate four more chorus members creating the appropriate sound effects. Since the clarity of the text takes precedence over any inflection or vocal variation, the actors do not even attempt representational characterizations. The speaking of the rhymes is closer to an interpretative reading than a theatrical performance. The players also alternate unpredictably between the recitation of descriptive passages and their own dialogue; thus, they move easily from indirect to direct discourse, often speaking or singing of themselves in the third person. TAKE ONE /JANUARY 1979 9