Cinema
At last the 1962 show
Christopher Hudson
At last the 1962 show — the wave ot nostalgia laps closer to the present, beaching memories of neon-winking drive-ins serviced by waitresses on roller skates, high school hops with cropped teenagers jiving to the rock 'n' roll beat of Flash Cadillac and his redblazered ensemble, the status-symbol Chevvies with Bill Haley pounding over the radio to the kids locked in heavy petting on the back seat; memories of young America when Kennedy was still President. the 'hard stuff' was whisky and all was well and moderately innocent with the world, and if the writing was on the wall, it would be nothing more ominous than graffiti. In short, American Graffiti ('AA' Ritz), produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed very successfully by George Lucas. I mention Coppola because, though there is nothing of The Godfather in this film, there is a great deal of Finian's Rainbow. The setting is a small town in Northern California; it is the end of the summer term, and four school friends who have known no other life have come to a parting of the ways. As the credits
come up in yellow neon to the sound of Bill Haley, they meet at MeIs Drive-In to consider the night ahead. Someone sighs, "Rock an' roll's been going downhill, ever since Buddy Holly died."
As befits a piece of unashamed nostalgia, distance is allowed to mellow the contours of setting and characters alike; the pressure of contingency is eased and the unpredictable logic of time-now isn't permitted to disturb the pond-smooth pattern of time-past. The four boys are clearly distinguished: Curt, in his Citroen is the scholar of the group, podgy, good natured and serious; Steve, also eighteen, is intense and responsible, a little pompous; Terry. at seventeen is as his nickname Toad suggests, a figure of fun, ugly and awkward but treated affectionately by the others; and John, the oldest at twenty-two, is in the American footballer mould, good humoured and loyal but still obsessed with the image of adolescent virility which retards his development.
They cruise around in their chromium armour, waiting in distress for brave ladies. Over the radio comes the voice of disc jockey Wolfman Jack, a local legend, crying his introductions to the latest Bo Diddley track, and around them the town is lit up with a white, shadowless glare like a fairground at night. Steve is havirig'.. trouble with his girl, Laurie, Who pleads with him not to go away to college; Terry, almost by accident, finds himself with a blonde, a car and 'a bottle of whisky, but can't hold down any of them; John, to his furious em
barrassment, is landed with somebody's younger sister, who defends herself witheringly from his scorn; and Curt is haunted by the vision of a beautiful girl in a white convertible, roaming the streets and never stopping.
It needs no closing of a picture palace to tell us that times are changing: and anyway American Graffiti is too self-deprecating for us to pay much attention to symbols. A few illusions disappear: John is outraced down Paradise Row in his custom-built Ford duce coupe, and when Curt hunts down Wolfman Jack in his lair, he finds a rather sad, solitary character in the transmission room, sucking ice lollies. The following day he flies out by Magic Carpet Airlines, leaving Mels Drive-In for higher things. Richard Dreyfuss and Paul Le Mat make solid, attractive characters out of Curt and John, and Cindy Williams is very impressive as Steve's girlfriend Laurie. George Lucas apparently based the film on the memories of his school companions, and the result is convincing and delightful.
The group are of their time, children of the early 'sixties, but their treatment in American Graffiti could not be more contemporary — affectionately mocking and humorous, occasionally sad, but never brash, sensational or declamatory. Only eleven years have passed, but it is as if they are viewed across a great divide, and the spirit of their innocence and ambition is only now to be recaptured with a sympathetic appreciation of its fragility. At the end, their photographs are flashed up on the screen beside laconic career notes: one killed in a car crash, one reported missing on active service, one a writer in Canada, one an insurance agent. The rainbow fades, the fairground closes, we are back in the present.
Serpico ('X' Paramount) is another good film — at any rate, the best of this year's cops-and-robbers films of which there have been more than enough. It tells the "true story" of Frank Serpico, the only honest cop in New York, or one of only five honest COPS to be exact. Improving himself with extramural courses and interesting women, Serpico discovers a liking for such things as ballet and intellectual discussions, which sets him apart from his colleagues. He grows his hair long, wears shabby or bohemian clothes, and becomes an excellent undercover agent for the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence.
But something is wrong; his fellow patrolmen are accepting pay-offs for turning a blind eye on drug operations, and Serpico's early idealism diminishes. "All my life I wanted to be a cop" he reveals, but no matter who he talks to or where he gof:,s, the corruption is all around. His superiors prevaricate, the pressure from his colleagues grows, and when in desperation he goes outside the Department to the Mayor's office (the Mayor replies that he can't afford to alienate the police, with a hot summer and riots ahead), he is forced out into the open, his life is in danger . He lives, of course, to give testimony to the Knapp Commission on police 2orruption, to provide Peter Maas with the story from which Sidney Lumet makes this film, and to retire to Switzerland, an honest man with an honest bank account. It is a classic case of one man against the system, and could have made an intolerably self-righteous film, but this danger is avoided by a first-class performance from Al Pacino in the central role. At first sunny and good-natured, shambling through the streets with his Old English sheepdog or demonstrating a ballet movement to a dismayed colleague, he becomes tense, weary and savagely irritable as the pressures build up. For once, a screen cop
emerges as a rounded human being, rather than a gun-toting mechanical bully whose vocabulary is limited to a snarl, "Git yo' ass outa there!" Directing the kind of story he relishes. Lumet has produced a quite distinguished film.
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