Take One (Jul 15, 1979)

terfuge, absolutely, so they can go to the Landmarks Preservation Committee and say ‘See, we tried everything. Now can we tear it down?’” Adds Sargent, “They'll tear it down over my dead body.” Queried about it, Hall PR spokesperson Pat Roberts first referred me to the Rockefeller Center PR man, but then said, “Look, the case is still in the courts and we're making no further comments. But my answer is...” and then ticked off the latest developments. The Hall closed April 26 for a $5 million renovation that included restoration of the interior’s brilliance, laying of 10,000 yards of new carpeting that matches the original and seat repair. General manager Charles Hacker is gone. In his place Radio City hired Robert F, Jani, a Disney vice-president credited with initiating Disney World, to head Radio City Music Hall Productions, Inc., of which Radio City Music Hall Entertainment Center—the new name for the Hall—is subsidiary. The production company is designed to tap into the national marketplace beyond the confines of the Hall while using the Hall as an originating point for some of the stage revues the company mounts. Jani‘s job is to use the Hall as a production center for live entertainment packages, such as “The New York Summer” variety act program that opened June 1, plus mount half-time At best the Rockettes are camp, at worst, pure Lawrence Welk 3 Superbowl shows, TV and feature films, convention and industrial shows and develop videotapes, discs, records, books and so on. The Rockettes have been spared the knife, increased to original troupe strength of 36 and will be sent on tour. The Hall has begun a musical film classics series for senior citizens on weekday mornings, held Newport Jazz Festival concerts in July and has set a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs revue for October. Apparently, Jani has an in with Bashful, the group’s manager. Radio City’s exporting the postcard program material it couldn't sell here is like taking the mountain to Mohammed, but maintains Roberts, “We can fulfill a need of this city and of the nation.” Continuing, “I’ve heard ‘family’ used against us so often, it’s almost become a dirty word. ‘Family’ isn’t just little children. We all had mothers and fathers. Disney is the only one that has tapped into this market, and we think we can do it too.” And if all those Moms and Pops out there don’t buy it, where does the Hall stand in two years? “We'll deal with that two years down the road,” said Roberts. Maybe you'll find her in the 60-storey house that Rocky built. Harlan Jacobson does his high kicks in the pages of Variety. Continued from page 35 Certainly there was nothing else to match Coppola’s film. If the Italians came up fairly empty, the French entries don’t even bear thinking about, with André Téchiné’s The Bronté Sisters providing a fair example of what has happened to the French cinema in the last decade: pretentious, over-written and _ overwrought, talky, poorly and_ self consciously acted and deeply silly and boring. When the prizes were announced on the afternoon of the last day, few journalists and film professionals cared enough to leave their lunch tables in the sun at the beach. Most of us sent volunteer representatives who would report back whatever dreary news there was. And it was dreary: the Golden Palm was shared by Apocalypse Now and The Tin Drum— thereby somehow reducing the importance of the first and elevating the second to an undeserved stature. The award to The Tin Drum makes one wonder if festival juries too are not influenced by a film’s excessive length and its own sense of “significance and importance”; on the other hand, one could argue that any jury which has Francoise Sagan, Susannah York and Jules Dassin as members is going to have great problems in comprehension and_ sen 42 TAKE ONE sibility. Terrence Malick was given the Best Direction prize for Days of Heaven, an extremely bizarre decision, both because the only thing of real quality in that film is Nestor Almendros’ cinematography, and because, as always, one wonders how one can be “best director” without having made the “best film.” The acting awards were even sillier: Sally Field for her athletic, self-conscious performance in Norma Rae and Jack Lemmon for China Syndrome. Not that there was much to choose from in the way of performances this year, aside perhaps from Patrick Dewaere’s effective creation of a love-obsessed madman in the otherwise foolish Serie Noire, but then it might have been better just to forget those acting awards entirely this year. The only prize which made any sense at all was the Camera d'Or, given to the best first feature—a very practical prize insofar as it includes an Eclair camera with all of its equipment. This year it was given to John Hanson and Rob Nilsson for Northern Lights, screened in “La Semaine de la Critique.” The film recreates in stunning black and white images the North Dakota of 1915 and the lives of a whole community of farmers as they attempt to organize the Nonpartisan League to fight back against capitalistic exploitation. Made for very little money with only the creative energies of Hanson and Nilsson to keep the film going during the three years it took to make, its originality, beauty and human sensibility put to shame most of the shoddy mediocrities screened in the Palais. No matter where one is in Cannes— along the beach, in a bar or restaurant, walking along the Croisette—there are hoards of Africans—from Senegal or the Ivory Coast is unclear—selling pseudoAfrican handicrafts (made in a factory in Levalois, in point of fact). They are inescapable as they move along beating tiny drums and repeating in mantra fashion “Hello! Pas cher, pas cher!” One local wag claimed that as the festival wound down, one could find a good many producers left with unsold products walking the beaches with bags of reels desperately whining “Hello! Pas cher, pas cher!” Perhaps, but on the other hand, given the quality of the majority of this year’s films in no matter what section of the festival, if there were any sincerity or honesty left (which two qualities, of course, do not exactly flower freely at the Festival), one might rather expect those producers to walk the beaches with a tiny drum screaming “Unclean! Unclean!” David Overbey is Take One's Paris correspondent.