CINEMA
London Film Festival
Tony Palmer
This year's London Film Festival began on Monday and continues until January 1 at the National Film Theatre. Organised by the redoubtable Ken Vlashin, it includes forty-six features of which seventeen are the work of new directors. Others are by apparently more experienced film makers. On Wednesday, for example, the latest depressing slice of 'real ' life from Tony Garnett and Ken Loach called Family Life shared the evening with the latest hysterical slice of ' documentary ' life from Peter Watkins called Punishment Park. The former has been developed from David Mercer's television play In Two Minds which dealt somewhat elliptically with what Mercer interpreted as schizophrenia: the latter is another of Watkins's allegories in which ' subversives ' are compelled to suffer an endurance test — if they fail, they are sent to prison; if they succeed, they are set free. Both films are memorable and both are given several showings throughout the festival.
Other established names include Satyajit Ray who, in his new film The Adversary, gently sketches the corruption of modern India in which frustrated ambition leads towards political revolt. Then there is Jacques Tati, motoring from Paris to Amsterdam in search of Monsieur Hulot and assembling the bizarre incidents encountered en route in a film called Traffic. Another Frenchman, Jacques Demy, has collaborated for a second time with Michel Legrand in Peau d'Ane and although their first romance, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, was less than successful, they have remained faithful to their fairytale absur dities. But with Delphine Seyrig as the grandmama heroine, you should worry.
Paul Morrissey, who was responsible for Flesh, is represented by Trash, an extraordinary film refused a general certificate by the censor and starring Mr. Holly Woodlawn as the female lead; it may be now or never to get to know her. From Russia, Kozintsev arrives with his version of King Lear: uncompromisingly barren, it is not so visually exciting as his earlier Hamlet although it is stunning enough; Smoktunovsky and Shostakovitch were obviously made for each other and Shakespeare has never sounded more musical.
But it is the work of the comparatively unknown directors that should command the attention. WR — Mysteries of the Organism (which, subsequent to its English premiere in the festival, opens at the Academy) attracted much attention at this year's Cannes fandango. A hilarious juxtaposition of the ideas of Wilhelm Reich and their realisation by an endlessly curious Miss from Yugoslavia, it perfectly blends documentary and fiction in the way that I outlined last week. (I hope to return to this film later.) Hilarity is also a characteristic of a delightful South American film by Nelson dos Santos called How Tasty was my Little Frenchman, in which the said Frenchman, seeking his roots, lives quite happily and nude among an Amazonian tribe until it announces its ambition to have him for supper and does. And scarcely less bizarre is a lengthy documentary by Philip Trevelyan, nephew of John, called The Moon and the Sledgehammer in Which a lunatic and possessed Sussex family start smashing up machinery for no apparent reason. Ah, but you see, they do it with humour. As well they might, because, accomplished though the film may be, its raison seems to me unclear. But technically the most stimulating film that I've seen is a work of Alan Sekers called The Arp Statue. Using entirely still photographs, the movie elaborates on several complex themes and stories; although the whole tends to be over subtle, not to say confusing, its sheer 'inventiveness kept me watching and waiting for more. It has genuine wit, too.
Would that such a quality illuminated some of the gloom merchants. The Roundup I rate one of the great films. In its successor on show this year called Agnus Dei, however, director Jancso drags out the now familiar symbols of violence and despair with such monotony that one's prime reaction is to giggle. As if parodying his own virtuosity, Jancso seems here to have played the humiliation game once too often. Similarly, the Hungarian film Love treats old age as if its every moment were clouded With tears; and Dot Dot Dot peers into the private and morbid life of an Argentinian priest so reactionary that even his Church finds him a touch embarrassing. Gloom, doom and yet more gloom is also contained in a Greek film called The Reconstruction which is, yes, you guessed it, a reconstruction of a ' real ' murder. And just in case you have time for any more, there is a programme devoted to the best films from the Annecy Festival of Animated Films. Where do they get all the money from? I'm always being told that the film industry is going bankrupt.
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