Cinema
Quick flicks
Peter Ackroyd
Airplane II: the sequel ('PG', selected cinemas) Eating Raoul
('18', selected cinemas)
rrhese two comedies could only have been made in the United States and yet, despite their unmistakable national tone, it is almost impossible to define 'American humour'. Contemporary English comedy has, in contrast, a long tradition and has in- herited some readily identifiable character- istics: they are, in roughly equal measure, anarchy and obscenity. Mention knickers, corsets, or the mother-in-law's 'falsies' and an English audience will begin to giggle; bring on a man dressed as a woman, and they will wet themselves. Smut and drag: it must have something to do with the wea- ther. There is no tradition of that kind in America; coming from nowhere, as it were, American humour can be crass and empty but it can also be very fast, reflecting the surfaces of contemporary life with a brightness which is unusual in English com- edy. But it is peculiarly without depth and so it is hardly surprising that both of these films are essentially parodies of other films or of other types of comedy.
Airplane II is an anthology of so many different cinematic genres, in fact, that it looks like an explosion in a film library; all those terrible films which the BBC save up for Christmas are here compressed into one Short, fast and often very funny picture. The immediate target is, of course, the 'disaster film' — this is the genre in which Shelley Winters, Charlton Heston and pro- bably Karen Black find themselves trapped in the lavatory of a plane which has caught fire while resting on the bottom of an underground lake. Shelley Winters will get stuck in the cistern, legs akimbo, while Charlton Heston is remembering life as a fighter pilot all those years ago . . . mean- while Karen Black, the air stewardess, is smiling in a frantic sort of way as she 'just tidies up a bit'. This is the model upon which Airplane II bases its farce and its satire; it ridicules every situation and every character in such a relentless manner that the effect is that of being cut to death by cardboard. A pilot has escaped from the Ronald Reagan Home for the Mentally Ill and boards a shuttle flight to the moon. The aircraft contains the usual assortment of blind nuns, cheerful veterinary surgeons and wise elderly couples (all of whom, of course, must die) as well as the black executive, the little Jewish woman and the child with a heart murmur. Flashbacks to the pilot's committal hearing: `Will you give the court your impression of Mr Striker, doctor?' I'm sorry, I don't do impressions. I am a psychiatrist.'
And so it goes on: in the space of some 90 minutes Airplane II manages to parody the whole range of clichés currently offered by the American cinematic industry. I am especially fond of the 'inconsequential con- versation' device, a long-time favourite in Hollywodd. 'I've never heard of him. No, that's not exactly true. We were like brothers.' The fact, however, that the film begins to run out of ideas after about an hour suggests, if nothing else, that the repertoire of phrases, gestures and tech- niques which the contemporary cinema provides is somewhat limited.
That is also the theme of Eating Raoul, an exercise in what I suppose could he called 'black comedy'. Certainly no other phrase seems appropriate for a film which is concerned with prostitution, sexual perver- sion and cannibalism and which treats such themes with a blithe insouciance which is almost endearing. Paul and Mary Bland, anxious to finance their new restaurant, Chez Bland, resort to selling their sexual services and then killing their clients. Mrs Bland, in costumes ranging from a Nazi harlot to Minnie Mouse, entertains a variety of sick and simple men. Mr Bland hovers with a frying pan, ready to strike while the client is still hot. The bodies are then sold to Doggie King Dogfood, except when the Blands eat them themselves. Fun, isn't it?
It was clear, from the beginning of the film, that someone was parodying some- thing but it was not at all clear what that might be. And then, when the raven-haired dominatrix started discussing the Bland en- chilada as a speciality in her new restaurant, the penny, as they say, dropped: Eating Raoul is straight out of the tradition of American 'situation comedy', the only dif- ference being that the situation has chang- ed. Any line and any gesture could have been lifted from television programmes over the last 30 years (or from the cheap 'quickie' films of the Fifties), and the com- edy comes from applying the same conven- tions to rather more unconventional material. It was all here: the absurd conver- sations, the barely adequate characterisa- tion, the clumsy direction, the air of un- motivated and quite unnecessary busy-ness, the ridiculous background music. Eating Raoul is a homage to bad television and to bad films.
It does not matter, then, that unlike
Airplane H it is very much a low-budget af- fair; it looked as if someone had set up the scenes and then run off in a panic, but in fact the rough camera-work and the harsh lighting become part of the charm (if that is the right word) of the film. It is very much an American picture, in the tradition of film-makers like Andy Warhol and John Walters who had the bright idea of asking real people to do dreadful and unreal things in front of the camera. Such films are very successful, at least with young audiences, and indeed Eating Raoul has beome something of a 'cult' — at least in New York, where its peculiarly bland amorality can still be considered funny.
Such films might, I suppose, be described as decadent, and certainly the self- consciousness and whimsicality involved are extreme. Since we are essentially seeing a parody of bad films there is no question of any meaning emerging from any of it: it lingers with fascination upon sickness, perversion and death and yet refuses to allow any significance to be attached to them. The English audience sat appalled at the callousness and voyeuristic vulgarity of the whole thing: English humour, after all, depends upon an exaggeration of life, while Eating Raoul is concerned only with flat- tening it. And yet it was strangely effective, and — I suppose this is the real point often very funny.
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