Cinema
The least of Lester
Kenneth Robinson
Royal Flash Director: Richard Lester. Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Florinda Bolkan, Oliver Reed,_ Britt Ekland 'A' Odeon, Leicester Square' (120 mins).
Never glance at Proust before going to the cinema. For professional reasons (why else?) I had been dipping into his twelve major volumes before seeing this week's film. All that stuff about rolling back the years just because you've tasted a biscuit dipped in tea is bound to be infectious. I thought at first it was the sting of an Odeon choc-ice on the tongue that took me back to afternoon truancy and The Prisoner of Zenda. And then realised it was the film itself that was taking me back to the world of Ronald Colman and swinging. chandeliers. Not to mention Tom ProWn's Schooldays. _ All very traumatic. But as eineastes will know Royal Flash is, in' fact, a Zenda-type story by George MacDonald Frazer about a Tom Browncharacter's grown-up adventures. In this tale of the cowardly Flashman's kidnapping by Bismarck a page of history has been written for the first time.
The picture opens with one of those anti-old-school scenes which now look not only dated but increasingly silly. I know it is good clean fun to sneer at the flag, old-fashioned virtues and 'Land of Hope and Glory.' But I have had enough of anti-heroism. So the opening of the picture left a nasty taste and nearly spoiled the remainder of it for me.
As it happened the remainder was mostly spoiled by another nasty taste. I don't like sadism any more than I like trad-bashing. I know, of course, that with Richard Lester in the director's chair what we have here is merely comic sadism. It is, in fact, 'A'-certificate sadism. This means that although people fall to death, get stuck in medieval spiked-cabinets or have their breasts slashed (this in a nasty fencing-duel between two women) they don't appear to mind terribly. I have a feeling that if provoked I could produce quite a good case against the sort of violence that doesn't seem to matter. But if I don't get really cross I might sound horribly pious. So I shall rest my case until I have seen some worse examples. What a peevish review this sounds. 1 was, in tact, disappointed. A Richard Lester film is usually something to look forward to, with its marvellous visual jokes. There are just enough of these to remind us of the man behind the 'Musketeer' films. In fact the one about the duellist's trousers catching fire is repeated here. Largely, I suppose, because infernos of all sizes are currently fashionable for both tragedy and comedy.
Surprisingly the director and writer have resorted to some subseaside humour.
'Where,' says Roy Kinneir, one of the Richard Lester Faithfuls, as he rushes round a raided brothel, 'are my drawers?' 'She'll be taking my trousers off next,' says Flashman wittily, as his bride-to-be discusses the weather with him. And lovely Lola Montez (Florinda Bolkan) reaches an interesting level of humour when strip-dancing with spiders for the ruler of Bavaria. 'I don't believe they are real,' he says. She shows him. `No,' he says, 'the spiders I mean.' Laugh? I thought I had forgotten how to. But although I am tired of anti-heroes, I suppose the best jokes in this film come, from Malcolm McDowell's Flashman. 'Don't be ridiculous,' he says, when told to 'fight like a man.' And his best line is 'Never hit a fellow when he's down; he may get up again.' I seem to have overlooked the plot. 'Briefly, the bullying Flashman gets lured to Munich where he is set up as a fake prince, as part of a political plot. From then on there is counter-kidnapping and re-kidnapping, if I followed the plot properly. There is also a great deal of mock sword-fighting in extremecy.410sant settings. And the , eridinvis very funny. indeed. It,, acts,.f a1,a trailer, for Richard Lester. Nns, of better things to comp.
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