CINEMA

Tinkling symbols

TOM HUTCHINSON

_ The best films by Joseph Losey are usually a considerable shock to the nervous system. He plugs us in to voltages of violence within ourselves with which we thought we had no connection. When he throws the switch completely, as in Accident or King And Country, we are jolted out of an AC acceptance of values via his DC vision. Why is it then that I found Figures In A Landscape (Carlton, Haymarket, 'AA') electric, but not electrifying?

It has many things going for it. Adapted from a book by Barry England, it is the furthest Losey has pushed us into anguished allegory. Two men (Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell) are on the run for an unknown reason in an unnamed country. The pursuit is symbolised into the constant, horrifying presence of a helicopter.

This machine, flailing its rotor-blades like an insane windmill, becomes the third character in the action : nudging the escapers into near-collapse, dropping bombs as though it were a dragonfly excreting eggs.

Even though most of the chase is told in the outdoors—against a fantastically moonscaped Spanish countryside—it is still the enclosed Losey milieu that we know from his other films; a claustrophobic world in which we can smell the sweat of terror in the protagonists' minds. However vast the perspectives we are still only living in an enormous room.

So why was I not more engaged? Perhaps because it is so obviously an allegory, so deliberate a decision to drain humanity away from all characters so that they become the abstract symbols of the title. I needed to be anchored in recognition of them as people. They needed to be men before becoming Man.

The tougher, older character (Shaw) reveals the inadequacy of his past life, the bull-rush of his personality gradually succumbing to the more cunning tactics of escape suggested by his companion. But the men become dependent upon each other, moving forward like two halves of the same identity, only betrayed at the end by Shaw's nature which, despite surface change, is still rooted rigidly in his background. Both actors are substantial in their portrayal of these men and it would be easy to blame Shaw's own screenplay for the eventual failure of the characterisation. A good deal of Harold Pinter's own personal style has rubbed off on Robert Shaw's writing since he directed Shaw's play, The Man in The Glass Booth.

There are the same repetitions of words. An idea is made verbal, dislocated by time, and then referred to again as though nothing had intervened. In Pinter, however, we are always aware of an existential pilgrim's progress; in Shaw we are aware only of a journey.

. But, for this conception, one can only blame Losey. After all, Losey's two most successful films, The Servant and Accident, were made from Pinter screenplays. Such characterisation can work. It_ is in treating his subjects like objects that he triggers off our non-acceptance of the relevance of the chase to ourselves; they become numbers in a landscape. .

I make these criticisms because of my admiration of Joseph Losey. I still hope you will see the film: for the fluency of its direction; for the landscapes, both interior and exterior, it tries to encompass. But, for me this time, no connection. Because, before I connect I have to relate.

I related to Sanjuro (Academy Three, 'A') all right. It is no accident that the Japanese director,. Akira Kurosawa, is the most Occidental of all the Japanese filmmakers; John Ford is his acknowledged master. I will. not argue whether or not the pupil hai already _surpasssed the master with such films as Living—but it is evident that . Kurosawa revels most happily in the Eastern-Westerns he makes about the samurai.

- Sanjuro -is another of these, perhaps the most disciplined and poetic statement abclut the nineteenth century Chandler-esque lonesters, since he directed Walkers On Tigers' Tails so many years ago.

With a twitching swagger to his shoulders Sanjuro (Toshiro Mifune: who else?) drifts into town to take over the burden of corruption being opposed by nine young, inexperienced samurai. Cynical and hard- bitten as any John Wayne, he assumes leadership, splitting tactical hairs of attack as skilfully as he sword-slashes the enemy.

The only respect he feels is for an opposing samurai—`another unsheathed sword.' Others he fells with bloodless agility: only from this man—in an astonishing, climactic moment—does he draw a huge fountain of bldod as tribute to their mutual craft.

It is a film full of the wryest, send-up humour. The eagle-samurai is ill at ease with the two hen-like women he encounters. The young warriors, seeing him as their heroic leader, follow him around as though he were Snow White and they were nine dwarfs, with comically choreographed movements.

But underneath the jokes and the violence is Kurosawa's main theme: responsibility to others. It is a theme he has extended in greater films; even in this slight example of his genius the compassion shines through.

Sanjuro is a lovely film, wig' no intensity about its very real intentions. But those intentions are there. It is the mark of Kurosawa's greatness that, when the occasion arises, he can wear them so lightly.